Everyone
in this cold
room is dead.
I haven’t looked
at the clock
so I don’t know
how long it’s been
since I breathed
clean air.
Even you
are dead.
And cold.
I’ve been cutting
for a while now.
My scalpel is erratic.
I cannot cut you
like a surgeon
yet, I’m afraid.
I’m tempted
to just slice
it all away,
a few sharp, short cuts —
cut quickly through
this thick mess.
But I don’t want
to miss, don’t want
to destroy something
that was critical
to your life.
I need to know.
I need you
to come back to life
— and you have.
You live again,
to help me
learn to cut properly.
Medical Student Editor, Writer-in-Training and Columnist Emeritus
Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University
Brent Schnipke is a third year medical student at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, OH. He is a 2014 graduate of Mount Vernon Nazarene University with a degree in Biology. His professional interests include writing, medical humanities, and higher education. When he's not studying, he can be found reading at a local coffee shop, training for his next race, or planning an adventure with his wife. Brent is also active on social media and can be reached on Twitter and Instagram @brentschnipke.
Prints, Pages, and Pagers
Prints, Pages, and Pagers aims to look closely at the lives of medical students and doctors, real or fiction, whose lives and experiences are told in novels, short stories, poetry, or any kind of writing. These book reviews are an opportunity for medical students to learn from the many fascinating stories produced by the field of medicine, and maybe to read something other than a textbook.
