Image by George Becker from Pexels
In the parking lot behind the emergency department,
a dandelion splits the asphalt cleanly.
No hesitation.
No audience.
Someone has dropped a glove nearby,
powdered blue, turned inside out,
fingers reaching for nothing.
Even absence needs shape.
Inside, a monitor stutters into rhythm
for a man who said he didn’t care
if his heart kept time.
Now it does. Reluctantly.
Like a clock found ticking in a drawer.
You learn to notice small uprisings
the way others notice weather.
A woman sits up after naloxone,
blinks into the fluorescent.
Her first word is water.
Her second is sorry.
Outside, the dandelion has gone to seed.
Each filament a decision
about where to land.
No one calls this anything.
No one writes it down.
Still, something opens
even here,
even through what was meant
to hold.
Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, mother of three, and lifelong New Englander. Her writing explores the intersections of medicine, motherhood, memory, and the human experience. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, The Berlin Literary Review, and Rust & Moth, among others. Her debut chapbook, The House as Witness, is forthcoming in spring 2026. She lives in New Hampshire, where she balances clinical work with writing.