For you

I would spend the next four years

of moonlight squinting my eyes into the blinding

luminescence of an Anatomy atlas, dancing

with the skeletons in my

Netter’s notecard stack until they become

like you, everlasting striations of my latissimus

dorsi; and for you I would

find in the annotated margins of the New

England Journal of Medicine a space in my week 

to measure, 

the forced expiratory volume you manage to create

against every collagen 

barrier to health we put in your way through our

complacency

with a system that is failing; for

you, my neighbor who labors just as tirelessly without pale

opportunity to see

in your physician, a reflection

of the color of your

skin, I would climb from the summit of Mount

Silverwheels to

the peak of professional aspirations

we forget to look up to see

beyond the strangulated hernia on the

gurney;

and for you, I would taste

the tart peculiarity of Western

medicine fighting with your natural will

to live

or die

by a spiritual means, too intangible to dissect; because

for you, I would invest

the fortune of time and the peri-

orbital rings of dedication just

to save myself

the opportunity, one day in

my life, to finally know you.