I Ask

A blood pressure check,
I put my hand on her wrist
to take a pulse,
a small, hard rectangle
protrudes from her skin
I ask. She says, A bullet.

I ask. She says, My husband shot me.
She is a small woman, quiet, calm.
Five times in the stomach. This bullet
somehow wayward, wandered to her wrist.

In the 50s, when I lived in Virginia, she says,
I had to have part of my stomach taken out.
They weren't sure if I'd live. But I did.

The poet, Mona Arif, recently graduated from the U of R School of Medicine and is currently a pediatrics resident at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.