Rachel Landrum Crumble
Bio:
Rachel Landrum Crumble received an MFA from Vermont College. Most recently she has published in Bindweed, Common Ground Review, and has work forthcoming in Spoon River Review and the Bluing the Blade. Her first poetry manuscript Sister Sorrow has twice been a finalist but is yet to be published. She has taught kindergarten through college and is currently a special education case manager and high school online English teacher. She and her jazz drummer husband are Yankee transplants who have been married for 39 years. They live in Chattanooga, TN. Find out more about Rachel Landrum Crumble at www.poetteachermom.com.
A New Law of Thermodynamics
Illness makes the narrative “I” merelya place name on the radar mapof capricious weather—take cover, and wait.
If matter is neither created nor destroyed, then what matters most is continuallybreaking apart and bonding againlike waves on the cliffs.
Are you feeling out to seain the oncology wardwith the white coats advancingand retreating around you, appearingmore fixed and elementalthan a grim diagnosis?
Or what forever element is missingfrom the Periodic Table of your heartas you await the resultsof the EKG in the Cardiac Care Unit?
Petitions escape the lips of loved ones on your behalf, in the form ofwater vapor, CO2, and a super atomthe size of a mustard seed.
Prayer bonds with prayer until gravityjoins in, raining down answers, or more questions. Either way:sleep now, for this unclassified elementis indestructible and heat-seeking.It will not miss—
If matter is neither created nor destroyed, then what matters most is continuallybreaking apart and bonding againlike waves on the cliffs.
Are you feeling out to seain the oncology wardwith the white coats advancingand retreating around you, appearingmore fixed and elementalthan a grim diagnosis?
Or what forever element is missingfrom the Periodic Table of your heartas you await the resultsof the EKG in the Cardiac Care Unit?
Petitions escape the lips of loved ones on your behalf, in the form ofwater vapor, CO2, and a super atomthe size of a mustard seed.
Prayer bonds with prayer until gravityjoins in, raining down answers, or more questions. Either way:sleep now, for this unclassified elementis indestructible and heat-seeking.It will not miss—
