July 2007 | Back to Table of Contents

End Notes

How to Write a Prescription

By Didi N. Koka, M.D.

It starts with two strangers
in a tete-a-tete of secrets
sworn like childhood blood sisters to silence.

One comes in limping, wounded
by this reckless world, wearing
pain like knitted spools wound tight in dull
throbbing colors lodged somewhere deep in skin.

The other, moved by duty or empathy,
removes their coat of indiffent bystander.
Exposed now like a new bud in winter thaw
to onslaught of changing emotional winds,

the other begins a frantic search on the one—
broken throat? broken heart? broken spirit?
Needles start to probe, poking holes, looking to mend.

Spools if found must be unwound.
During this process of unraveling then stitching up again
the paper comes out with chicken scratch
scrawled across, an inconsequential sliver of martyred
bark passed between hands,

a symbol of trust, a healing crust of bread
yet again given to another in this starving world.

Didi Koka is a family physician at Hennepin Family Care East Lake Clinic in Minneapolis. She entered this poem in Minnesota Medicine’s writing contest. Although it didn’t win, the judges rated it highly.