When you said just chop a clove of garlic and swallow it like a pill
in response to my bronchitis, 
it wasn’t about bootstraps and pulling at them or 
mistrusting the doctors even though you did 
mistrust them. 

It was about that oasis
each of us must find for and in ourselves.
How we wish  – oh, do we wish – 
we could speed the process up 
and walk each other there. 

Natalli Amato is the author of the poetry collections Burning Barrel and On a Windless Night. She is from Sackets Harbor, New York, and you can read her work here: www.natalliamato.com