Malaika King Albrecht

Accidental Saints

It’s true I can find water
with a simple bendy straw,
but now with an exhale
wedged in my lungs,
I can’t breathe for a night

or maybe it’s been three.

The trap the body sets
is revealed over time, leaves spaces
between my words that can’t be filled
with anything but time: the minutes
it takes to sign a consent form,
the hours it takes for you
to return from surgery, the days to go
home, and weeks of recovery.

This morning, I met a woman
who called me Dear, who said, don’t you
want the coffee you just bought?
as I wandered empty-handed
towards an exit. She held the coffee
towards me, and I cried—watching
the way she let go of an armful
of grief to extend her hand.

EEG

A nurse attaches
electrodes to my
child’s scalp, wraps gauze
around their head. Wires
snake past shoulders
to the recorder
clipped at their hip.
The nurse says Just live
per usual the next
twenty-four hours.

When we return,
the doctor says my child’s brain has unstoppable surges
of electrical activity, rapid, continuous spikes
and buried waves—
a wild landscape of activity—like a seismogram, I think.
While the nurse unwinds gauze,
my child jokes, I’m a
visitor to your planet,

and this is how you treat me?
Within four-tenths
of a second, the brain
can tell the body to laugh.

Malaika King Albrecht served as the inaugural Heart of Pamlico Poet Laureate and is the author of four poetry books, including most recently The Stumble Fields, which was a finalist in the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award (Main Street Rag 2020). She’s the founding editor of Redheaded Stepchild, an online magazine that only accepts poems that have been rejected elsewhere. She’s also a metal artist living in Virginia on Freckles Farm, where she works as a yoga instructor, Reiki practitioner, and equine specialist incorporating horses into healing.