After class

Cleaning the science classroom,
I came across a bin of stethoscopes.
I never have before, so I slipped one
over my head and was immediately struck
by how loud the world became.
I placed it over my heart,
imagined my mother, a nurse, listening
to so many heart stories and then, coming home
and listening again. How little room
there was for thought
while my blood rushed in and out,
the way a wave knocks you down,
the sound you hear
when you are trying to right your body,
bring your head above the water,
how rarely we stop to hear it
even though it is a song always playing.

*

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a high school biology teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Anti-Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and others. The author of two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press), her first full length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, is available from Unsolicited Press.