Maddie Baxter: THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW

Maddie Baxter
THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW

My left leg is
an eroded coastline.

Squeeze my thigh to feel
the plateau of un-muscle.

Shaving my legs for the first time
at 13

was pressing a blade
to rubber.

If my pain was a keyboard
it’d be the lowest note,

uncaring, deep, monotone,
a whale’s cry

many leagues under
the eroded coastline.

The doctor touches my toes
with chilled prongs

A cold fish in
one of those pedicure shops

where the fish devours
the dead skin off your toes.

When I was born the fish gnawed away
at nerve endings in my left leg.

My leg is snapped telephone pole
no current pulses

through it and my brain
convinces me

I am covered
in tumors.

I am covered in
cafe au lait birthmarks

Stained in coffee
that indicates disease.

Now that I have been touched in fear
by a doctor

who does not even know my name,
I wait

for a bill in my mailbox
totaling $611.21

My mother’s texts
sound like co-star horoscopes.

Sometimes erosion is fixed
with sandbags

Around the crash pad
for waves

I dream about becoming a scarecrow
stuffed with cotton

Meaty, and upright
along the coastline.

Maddie Baxter (she/her) is a poet and copywriter living in Charlotte, North Carolina. She graduated from Wake Forest University with a degree in English and Creative Writing. She’s a fan of poetic constraints, surrealism, and public bathrooms. You can read more of her work in recent issues of The News Station, Unbroken Journal, and Drunk Monkeys.