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Poetry and Medicine
January 28, 2020

Nothing New Under the Sun

Author Affiliations
  • 1University of Virginia, Crozet
JAMA. 2020;323(4):381. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.21420

What I want back are not my breasts,
though they were the exact ones I would
have chosen in the breast shop.

Laura died, and she was diagnosed after me.
Her daughter is my daughter’s age and when we pass
in the hallways of their school, we both look the other way.

Molly’s gone too. We lounged in La-Z-Boys together
in the chemo lab, and she’d laugh when I told the nurse
today was not a good one to put that needle in my arm.

The quail in the orchard was louder last night
and so I forgot to worry for a good long time.
A requirement for being found is being lost.

What I want back is my mother’s voice in the morning,
still in shadows, or the moon blanching the sycamore,
the way it doesn’t seem to recognize tumult at all.

Section Editor: Rafael Campo, MD, MA, Associate Editor.
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Article Information

Corresponding Author: Charlotte Matthews, MFA (cmatthews@virginia.edu).

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

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