The Spy Sonnets
L.S. McKee

10: Samaritan

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This is the part I wanted to forget.
That I’ve never held a broken body. That I’ve never
cupped my hands over the wounds of the dying,
never healed the weary. Truth be told, I’d have you
forget every cowardice, every ruined world,
settings I cannot embrace for you because they are neither mine
nor yours: cities we cannot surveil. Even our own bodies
we can’t know. Think of an x-ray’s inverted shadows:
bones casting light into the pitch-blackness of
open spaces, between organs we’re better off forgetting.
For when they are invisible, we are whole. It’s what we seek:
completion—gods drawn from a skeleton of stars,
and a stranger’s arms around us, lifting.