It was mud.

All mud. His language lost in pain

and loose teeth, and it may have been

important, may have been a plea

for a priest, a cigar, or forgiveness for

stealing his sister’s lunchbox, his brother’s

wife, and do you think we fill in

other people’s cracks to heal our own?

Some days, I drag soap over broken bodies

to convince myself that I am clean.

My instructor never turns their groans into stories.

She pokes a straw through his chapped lips

to shut him up, and has me hold his wrist

to feel how blood leaves the extremities

when the heart begins to scream, feel how

his pulse shakes like a wet, caged bird.

He jolts.

He’ll squirm less when he’s dead

my instructor jokes, and laughs

when my hands jump to cover his ears

betraying my need to protect this patient

from her sharp truth, her rough decree

that to the world, he is already unhearing

unseeing, unformed, already dispersed

beyond our reach, beyond revision

the way fire burns wood into ash

the way that ash and water

will forever be mud.

“CNA Clinicals Day #3” by Anneka Johnston was awarded third place in the William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition.

Anneka Johnston grew up in West Michigan and attended Kenyon College, majoring in English with a special certification in creative writing and minoring in chemistry. Continuing her lifelong commitment to avoid sunny weather, Anneka moved to Chicago following graduation and worked in a Suboxone clinic at the height of Chicago’s opioid epidemic. She began searching for the common ground between medicine and the humanities and became passionate about giving voice to patient experiences through narrative art. She is currently a fourth-year student at Loyola’s Stritch School of Medicine and is planning to pursue a career in psychiatry.

Anneka’s poem “CNA Clinicals Day #3” is an exploration of how caretakers struggle to make meaning out of death.