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Jean Liew
Peaked T-Waves
He shows me the EKG
“These are peaked T-waves”
The tracing rises up
Against the orange grid
“He’s uninsured, undocumented
The ED is his dialysis”
I imagine him stumbling out
Off the bus in Texas summer
His internal clock brings him
Says it’s time, but one day
It will stop—with peaked T-waves
Twelve years, several states later
In mid-afternoon heat
The vote is quickly decided
We sit across a speakerphone
What is one trillion to us
That, we cannot fathom
Not when I filled out my FAFSA
And not even now
Her eyes count dollars
Each visit an imposition
The medicine was a miracle
While she had it
And we had the power to care
But today we’ve lost it