At Capacity
For the doctor who volunteered as Gatekeeper at the MSF Ebola Treatment Center in Monrovia, Liberia
No pearls on these gates,
no one comes inside.
With empathy, I turn them away,
but I turn them away to die
while I notch another soul into leather.
Behind the gate, I pace and stare.
The bodies change, weaponize,
I don’t want their coins.
I have signed a new oath
to these corridors,
a vow to live with the absence
of touch. To let the new rules
burrow deeply in me, as itchy fleas.
Don’t touch my own face,
even, in worry. The void fills
with disgust; the repulsion of bodies.
A woman left her baby by the gate
certain something so small
might fit, and not let chaos in.
But all I saw was a bundled-up grenade
she kissed on the forehead
and pulled out the pin.
Chelsea Kerwin is an MFA candidiate at Bowling Green State University. She has worked as a cashier, a gallery manager, a library proctor, and an usher, but most consistently as a poet. She recently won the Devine Fellowship at BGSU, and has been published in The Tulane Review, East Coast Literary Review, and Hobart.
At Capacity by Chelsea Kerwin is a post from: Straylight Literary Magazine