just a medical student.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m just a med student. The rest of the team will be here shortly, they’ll explain everything to you.”
We wait in silence.
Poetry Thursdays
Poetry Thursdays is our initiative to highlight poetry and prose by medical students, with a new post every Thursday. If you are interested in contributing or would like to learn more, please contact our editors.
Contributing Writer
UT Southwestern School of Medicine
Aishwarya Iyer is a fourth-year medical student at UT Southwestern in Dallas, TX. She graduated with a Master of Public Health in Global Health from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in 2022. She is passionate about reproductive justice, public health, narrative medicine, research, and advocacy, and is excited to engage with these varied interests in her career as a family medicine physician. In her free time, Aishwarya finds joy in exploring new coffee shops, working out, reading novels and dreaming of writing one someday, and spending time with friends and family.
Air Hunger
His diseased lungs,
stiff like dry clay,
function like gills out of the water.
champagne tap
she is curled on her side like a child — / eyes closed, back exposed.
Dying is Not
Dying is not / as romantic as I once thought. / I think you always knew this.
More Than Skin Deep
Our successes are born out of / The communities that uplifted us. / The teachers that pushed us.
Choreiform Tango
The intruder slithers in at midnight, / slinking his way to the boy fast asleep, / the tangled mess of hospital wires his field of untrimmed grass,
Operating Room
As I step carefully into the sterile field / past the rows of scalpels, forceps and clamps, / I sense a gentle fluttering in my chest.
Caduceus
Should the symbol of medicine bear one snake or two? / If you answered two, then the joke is on you! / Or, at least, that’s the current popular view.
Trauma Shift
I imagine her mother / Squeezing daughter’s limp hand / Silent tears
Anatomy: A Cadaveric Poem
Anatomy is more than flesh and bone and blood. / It’s more than the donor and the scalpel teaching the student.
HPI
good morning, i’m the medical student / i must ask how you are feeling / even though my eyes already sting
Borborygmi
Borborygmi – rumbling or gurgling noises made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines.
Contributing Writer
Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Raelynn is a fourth year medical student at Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami, Florida, Class of 2023. In 2019, she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelor of Science in biomedical sciences with a minor in Spanish. She enjoys reading, playing soccer, running, and playing guitar in her free time. After graduating medical school, Raelynn would like to pursue a career in Emergency Medicine.