by Sara Dallmayr

The nurse
pushed a needle into the twist

of cobalt currents under my skin.
In nervous solidarity I blurted out

“Bifurcate: to divide into two parts,
a divergence.”

The three-eyed light above the bed
settled a vacant stare. The light had

a name: Infinity. Of course. But the vein
blew its universal pulse on the sheet,

spilling its ceaseless rhetoric.
I said because like the pattern

of veins the words pumped dumbly:
“Two veins diverged in a yellow wood, and I,

I took the vein less traveled by,” except
the nurse didn’t laugh since he had blown

the second attempt and the vein itself.
Robert said he wasn’t the type

who did things twice, even though he admitted
he liked bifurcated veins. Nestled deep, a twinge.

Inside me, two ovaries diverged, one swollen
and the other unremarkable except in medical

terms unremarkable denotes perfection in shape
and function so in this empty, aging infinite tree

with its lowly eyes and teeth and prominent left
branch of irregular leaves, the light with

three immeasurable eyes, I forgot my mask
with its two loops. The truth

only breathing breeds inescapable focus.
And the needle slid through a place we

weren’t even looking, not even on the path
but on the bend of my left shoulder,

some silent angel
or a forgotten wing.

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Sara Dallmayr is originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan. She received a BA in English from Western Michigan University. Dallmayr is currently a rural mail carrier in South Bend, Indiana, where she cohabitates with her husband and two cats, Olga and Hermione. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Esthetic Apostle, 3Elements, Write Launch, High Shelf Press, Third Coast, and Texas Review.