Nurse, Please Tell Me The Medical Term by Whitney Egstad

NURSE, PLEASE TELL ME THE MEDICAL TERM

for the phantom I feel in my body

when it is not a limb

but an umbilical cord— a dotted line

I trace from my navel to the womb

of my dead mother.

This is the elegy

I sculpt into cursive

with the connective tissue

strung between our bodies

like a thread and two tin cans

to cup a nascent hand around

my unformed ear and listen

before we had language

before I learned at least thirty words

for goodbye.