‘Anesthesia’
Anesthesia
If you had time for a dachshund, you’d name her Anesthesia. You think of that now in the dark while nudging your cheek into your backpack as you slide slow asleep. Bright-eyed, she’d smile in her x-rays at the vet. Inside that backpack all your hygienic necessities and the spine of your mother’s Holy Book and a fresh pair of your father’s old holey socks. Meanwhile, pots and pans are barking in the corridor outside inside some medicine cabinet. So, if you had a dachshund, well, now you’d have to jump up from this treasured nap. X would mark the spot. Anesthesia would be all bright-eyed and drag you outside to play fetch aside other hygienic necessities. Nature has such needs. It’s why you lament time’s brevity, being on this forever 24-hour shift, an anesthesiology resident in some dim call room forever condemned to banishment forever in a hospital tower forever. Dr. Rapunzel. Dr. Rapunzel. STAT. Unless you’re Dr. Rip Van Winkle without sense of time. If you had forever, for sure, you’d rescue a dachshund named Anesthesia. You’d cuddle her like a backpack for a pillow. That’s that. But for now, your phone exhales the theme song from Star Trek, the resulting portal blur, the instinctive to roll over and no longer play dead, atta girl, such a dutchess that Anesthesia, just a flat backpack. Precious hour of rest erased and now you’re through the OR doors bright-eyed and back as if never left. Just in time. Smelling like a dog.
Photographer Taylor Noe
Joe Bisicchia writes of our shared dynamic. An Honorable Mention recipient for the Fernando Rielo XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry, he has written five published collections of poetry. He also has composed over three hundred individual works that have been published in over one hundred publications. Joe is director of public affairs for Virtua Health in New Jersey and is a Practicing Excellence certified clinician coach. He earned his BA at La Salle University and is currently on the MFA track at Lindenwood University. To see more of his work, visit JoeBisicchia.com.
Taylor Noe is a poet who loves to capture life in photos as well as words.
