Whitnee Coy
Settled Reality
over 24 hours after she was
sawed from my body,
a limb outgrowing a weathered tree;
I was able to touch her
for the first time.
hands washed, scrubbed with
little plastic-bristle brushes
& a timer ticking away.
she wasn’t pressed
wet & purple to my chest
like the movies
or the stories from friends
or the moments I had envisioned
months before. instead buttons
pushed to calibrate oxygen
inside her container & given permission
to slide my fingers, nearly the length
of her body, skipping vessels & cords
chartering from her stomach,
nose, arms, and head
keeping her alive. I sat wilted;
a crumpled shell in a open-
backed hospital gown.
to lose something without losing it
can’t be explained
but grief settles still the same;
light speckled dust on the top
no matter how much you clean.
WHITNEE COY (she/her), from Lexington, Kentucky, now resides in South Dakota with her family and enjoys doing stick-poke tattoos with her husband. An MFA graduate from the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University, she is pursuing an Ed.D in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership. Whitnee is an award winning poet & children's book author with three published poetry chapbooks (SD State Poetry Society, Finishing Line Press, & Alien Buddha Press) and one forthcoming (Finishing Line Press) in 2025. She also published in 2024 her award-winning children’s book, "Elsie's Adventures to Brainy Cove," a social-emotional learning tale. She is a professor at Oglala Lakota College, a tribal college on the Pine Ridge Reservation.