I tell her I am writing
every shard of every
memory of every moment
it doesn’t matter if it
matters it matters
to me

I believe meaning is constructed
I tell Hemali nobody
put it there for me to find
I agree Hemali says
meaning is assigned and
different people assign different
meanings to different events
I think that’s what causes most
of the conflict in the world

I write so I say
meaning is constructed
Hemali sees patients so she says
meaning is assigned
our different words tell different
stories I build she prescribes

I wonder if even in our conversation
full of agreement we assigned
different meanings to our words
when she said conflict I thought
she was talking about war
but she spoke of the person assigned
to keep the floor of the operating room clean

a surgeon dropped an instrument
the person shouted for it to be picked
up but the surgeon paid no attention
because what the surgeon saw
was an abdomen open
pink and wet and almost dead