Do you notice me?
Do you see my soul?
Or does attire blind you?
And is all I am a role?
We all have a part to play
And I play mine well
So I keep on performing
In this living Hell
Do you know what it costs me?
Do you see the price I pay?
You may see a coat of white
But I see a world of gray
I make a great impression
But you don’t know the real me
I am hidden in plain sight
White coat anonymity
Tyler Estes is a M.D./M.P.H. student at UAMS.
I dreamt I had a garden
in the backyard of a home
that doesn’t actually exist.
It wasn’t a large garden,
and it wasn’t a large home,
but I was content and I was proud.
The yard was mostly well kept,
but not the garden—
It was overgrown,
and I couldn’t walk the plotted path.
The weeds had taken it over.
I could see that the produce was plenty,
though I couldn’t recall
what was planted.
I could see something
that looked like cabbage.
I wanted badly to tend the garden,
to do something healthy
that I would enjoy,
though I knew that first
the weeds must be cleared.
But the day had grown too dark,
and I needed equipment
that I didn’t yet have,
so I would need to be patient.
And I was not only at peace—
I was free.
Rachel Armes is a program coordinator in the Institute for Digital Health and Innovation at UAMS.
It is a long story. This is a short version:
I was about to die.
I was about to make room for new people.
My job was going to be the dream job
of someone who has been waiting for a break.
But I was stubborn; I was not sure I wanted to expire
and the doctors knew too much about death’s tricks,
so, I lived for a while longer, because, also, someone died
her heart was still beating.
So, in a barbarous display of art and cunning
the surgeons carved the dead woman’s chest
and cut her heart out for me.
The empty cavity of my chest waited like a yearning womb
like a bride at midnight, while the doctors held
in their obtuse machinery of death, the flicker of my life,
and the other person’s heart entered me, it filled my chest
and eagerly resumed its mandates of drums and cymbals
blowing, pumping, hissing, blindly loyal to the blood.
And in an instant the other person and I fused, bride and groom,
my life and her life, half in half, betrothed
surrendered to the mystery of electricity and flesh.
Carlos C. Gomez
