Illustration by Tim Robinson.
St. Denis of Paris,patron saint of migraines, be my guardian. Teach me tooto walk this world
without a head. Like you, to carry it gently as a newborn.Early this morningmy daughter Lucy called me as she was walking home from
the pediatric intensivecare unit where she works as a senior resident. “One of my patientsdied last night,”
she told me. “Another is circling the drain. Both fourteen years old.”I said whatevera father is supposed to say to reassure his child,
who grew uptoo fast, that the world is still a place worth living in.Let me hold
my aching head like a lantern, shine its unshuttableblind eyesinto the darkness around us. St. Denis, speak through me. Help me
tell Lucy, the rootof whose name in Latin means light, to forgive herselffor not being able
to save that fourteen-year-old girl. For not knowing what to sayto the girl’s grievingfamily. For having to say to the other fourteen-year-old’s parents
that their sonmay not make it through the night. Let our bare feet forgivethe glass shards
we walk on. Let the man bleeding out in the gutter forgivethe hit-and-rundriver. No amount of morphine or fentanyl is going to ease
the painof being here, then not being here. I am a man walking aroundcity streets at dawn
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Editor and Publisher, The Nation
without his head. I hold it like a ventriloquist holdshis dummy.It says stupid things. I am still learning to forgive myself for living
while othersdie. The monitor keeps reading the fourteen-year-old boy’s heart rate,blood pressure, oxygen
saturation, respiration, body temperature. The numbers keepfluctuating. The wavyoscillating lines are the scribbles I at four years old
once drew in a blanknotebook to show my mother I too knew how to write lettersand words that had meaning.
Donald PlattDonald Platt has published nine books of poetry, including Tender Voyeur from Grid Books in 2025 and Swansdown, winner of the 2022 Off the Grid Poetry Prize.