Poetry

Collateral Damage by Morgan Mayo

There are two main professions that nice little girls in the first grade aspire to have:

1. A Teacher
2. A Nurse

I decided against teaching as soon as I realized not everyone loves to learn as much as I do, therefore, in roughly two years I will be in nursing school. Due to my decision, and the passion surrounding it, when I am not writing, I am watching one of the many trauma unit, surgeon, or EMT shows I have developed an affinity for over the years.

At this point, those that live with me often hear one of two things:

1. Frank Sinatra on the thrifted Victrola I claim as my prized possession, along with my also thrifted leather jacket and twenty-year-old stuffed lamb.
2. The sound of ambulance sirens blaring from the speaker on my iPad.

…
If there is one thing I have learned from the over consumption of medical related television shows, it is that if I ever get shot, I should pray there is an exit wound.

This is for two main reasons:

1. The exit wound provides a place for the energy to go. Bullets travel fast and carry large
amounts of kinetic energy. If the bullet stops, lodged in the body, the surrounding tissue is left
to absorb the remaining energy resulting in collateral damage.
2. The exit wound provides another way for the blood and debris to drain.

One would imagine the time and passion prescribed to my future nursing career would result in the
subject becoming a metaphor which I relate all other extraneous elements of my life to. But love and
its gentleness, have traditionally been so diametrically opposed to violence, that it has taken me until
now to realize the explanation for my hardships has been at my fingertips. I endure suffering beyond
what I imagined from the lack of release of people that have crossed paths with me, because they are
lodged in my head like a bullet.

I have to let them go for two main reasons:

1. The exit wound would provide a place for the love to go.
2. The exit wound would help the grief drain properly.