This is a poem on my other body, 
the body Mom made, the one 

that saved its front teeth, its first haircut 
in a jewelry drawer when I was young. 

The one pressed against Mom’s velvet dress, 
but not against in resistance. Candy 

apple one. Aqua nail polish one. 
Heart locket one. My one to her, 

My bel, I heard as music in the womb. 
The one I wrote rainbows 

on like Mom’s closet’s empty walls 
with my colored markers. 

The one Dad slathered in sunscreen 
and sponge bathed in grape bubble bath. 

Was I three? Five? It was summer 
that held us together or made us one. 

In today’s winter I cannot abandon 
that body alone. The Memphis sun 

where we simmered okra and croquets 
as our spaniel barked at my brothers in boxers, 

Dad on a ladder with the long broom 
to fetch an inflated pool toy from the roof. 

My bel, in the sanctuary where prayer lived 
inside Dad’s lips succulent as his fried drumsticks, 

in the neighborhood where bees swarmed 
our honeysuckle hedges and once drew 

blood from that Bel-of-my-life body. 
They hurt quite a lot, the bees, 

before Mom picked 
the scabs off my heart. 

Now I am thirty. Sugary as a prune. 
My stroke-body says otherwise, 

scoops me hollow, 
tarnishes my blonde. 

Memory turns away 
as if a photo of us in our kitchen shredded then 

reassembled for a hall of twisted mirrors 
and sentences aphasia leaves on my bed, 

their shards sharpening into shadows. 
I bargain with the words 

you read as this poem 
that may not be what I meant. 

Elly Katz

At 27, verging on a doctorate at Harvard, Elly Katz went for a mundane procedure to stabilize her neck. Somehow, she survived what doctors surmised was unsurvivable: a brainstem stroke secondary to a physician’s needle misplacement. In the wake of the tragedy, she discovered the power of dictation and the bounty of metaphor. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Amsterdam Review, Cleaver Magazine, Sacramento Literary Review, The Stardust Review, and Thin Air Magazine, among others. Her first collection of creative nonfiction, From Scientist to Stroke Survivor: Life Redacted, is forthcoming from Lived Places Publishing in Disability Studies (2025). Her first collection of poetry, Instructions for Selling-Off Grief, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (2025).

Author’s website: https://ellykatz.com