to the doctors who keep telling me i'm okay--an abbreviated list of symptoms:  

the statistical reality--
hypochondriacs get cancer too.
if i figured out what kind,
could i then explain this feeling?
 
my heart vein sharp wrist flutter
the haunting of my right breast
my skin my marks my mirror
my arm raised my armpit full
this something bad growing
lymph and nodes
the throat the lump the swallow
body body body:
i make noise.
 
do you ever feel a tightening?
muscles are arguable.
ankles are suspicious.
as i write this, it hurts.
 
conjugate:
could can will has is
happen happened happening
to me.
 
your harvard degrees are not a comfort,
there is too much you do not know:
the etymology of the word psychomatic, for example, and the future.
one day i may wake up riddled and you will be surprised.
 
if i admitted i have imagined myself into this war
would you hold me?
the truth is not always the thing you need.
i want to live forever like a quick bright thing,
and i cannot stop this shaking in my hands. 



​
Hannah Nahar is a Boston-based student and writer. Her work can be found in Palooka, Sixpenny, Words Dance, and One Sentence Poems. She spends a lot of time thinking about watercolor paint, sadness, and queer feminist politics.