AMY BAGWELL

you believed him?

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2024: VOL. 39.

in a shroud of quiet
cloudy as paper 
and cold as well water 

is how I picture 
my mother 
after a seizure 

leaves her in an ICU 
seven hours from me
and barred to visitors 

so when a plague-
weary nurse says yes 
he will hold 

the phone to her ear 
because she might
hear me calling her

back from far 
inside her petrified 
body I have to remind 

myself to trust people 
especially nurses 
like she was 

for thirty years
on the same floor
of the hospital

where she now lies 
unresponsive
because the truth is—

while I’m begging 
her to wake up 
and naming everyone

who loves her 
and sounding too much 
like the survived by

section of an obituary—
that phone could be 
anywhere

Amy Bagwell’s poems are found in American Literary Review, storySouth, Smartish Pace, Free State Review, Watershed Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and New Ohio Review and are paired with art by Dawn Roe in the chapbook WRETCHED YEW (Theurgical Studies Press). She’s a member of the Goodyear Arts Collective in Charlotte and holds an MFA from Queens University. amybagwell.com