I was taught that suffering was holy, that refusing medical care was an act of faith, that death was not an end but a passage. When I lay in a hospital bed, weak from blood loss, I wasn’t thinking about survival, I was thinking about obedience. This is how power works. It does not always come with force; sometimes, it comes with quiet, relentless conditioning. They make you believe that survival is secondary to submission.

Medicaid is more than healthcare, its part of the thread in the fragile web that holds us all together. When they cut it, they’ll be severing the connections that keep people alive. They tell us that survival should be earned, that only the “deserving” should receive care, but this is a lie designed to keep us isolated. The truth is, no one survives alone. We are interconnected, bound together like the roots of a forest, like the filaments of a spiderweb. When the web breaks, it won’t just be the most vulnerable who fall, it will be all of us.

"Who even are we? We are the wolf and the woman, both hunted and haunted, both feared and revered. We are sculpted by microbes within and the stars above, shaped by winds, viral vectors, and geological forces beyond our control. Each of these agents—viral, microbial, geological, meteorological—are actors in our existence. They do not simply change us; they become us. They are us.

What does it mean when everything comes undone? When light, time, and memory shift in ways that feel unnatural? When grief makes the familiar suddenly unfamiliar? This poem lingers in that space, in the way small things, like the slant of afternoon light, hold echoes of loss, longing, and the quiet hope of trying again.