Cadaver Living
Artwork by Safa Hussein
An indigenous woman was forced to give birth alone.
She was in a hospital in the presence of a nurse.
Her child, born alive, dies from medical neglect and when the nurses speak to the now grieving and traumatized mother, they refer to her deceased child as a specimen.
Cadaver Living
Hooyo, when you looked at me wide-eyed and frantic, I can tell you I have never known fear like that
The full weight of your terror paralyzing me,
I thought we were in line to get our second vaccine,
You were fighting a war.
You said you didn’t like the concept of vaccine mixing,
But really you didn’t like the idea of being experimented on.
Hooyo, I’m sorry,
That with all my schooling I was not prepared for your terror, you see
You’re an intelligent woman
A brave woman
A resilient woman
That is what this country has required of you.
You’ve seen war,
Seen it take away your home, your youth, your people
Whodda thought you’d have to fight another war
every time you entered into an ER
you’d wonder,
if you’d make it out alive
Hunched over, mid-labour, struggling to keep from convulsing while wave over wave of contraction washed over you
So the medical student clumsily poking and prodding at your spinal cord wouldn’t leave you paralyzed.
You learned over and over the costs of this free healthcare.
Hooyo, I’m sorry it took me this long to understand the miracles you performed to be here,
To get us here,
To keep us alive,
To keep us safe.
When our parents tell us they are afraid,
They are not hesitant.
They are not ignorant.
They’ve experienced a system that sees our bodies as walking cadavers.
Our children as specimens.
Our vulnerability as opportunities for the advancement of medicine.
Advanced for who?
Advanced when?
Simms experimented on Anarcha, became the father of modern gynecology, now we have torturous gynecological practices
But let’s not question it, right?
They do good work, right?
Oh Benevolent Doctor save me from my sickness
Save me from my Blackness
Save your world from my Darkness
We act surprised when our parents want us to become doctors
We say:
But you avoid the doctor like the plague
Rather pray the pain away, rather sit in your discomfort
Our parents recognize those with the power to heal have the power to kill
And those who have wielded that power have done some genociding,
They’ve done some torturing.
They’ve done some terrorizing.
But we don’t talk about that.
We can’t talk about that can we?
We’ve not the information, the data they love so much.
Mere anecdotes aren’t compelling enough for them.
They need statistics to tell them what we all already know.
That life and death are riddled in every choice we make.
That sometimes we need to choose between resigning ourselves to death by a thousand paper cuts or death beneath a single scalpel.
So they safeguard that shit.
Because they know that without that we are left here sacrificing our sisters,
Our brothers,
Our parents,
Our elders,
To a system that chews them up and might never spit them back to us
They force us here:
Immobilized
Paralyzed
Sedated
Unable to fight back
Unable to resist
Unable to organize.
Convinced that benevolence is a white coat,
A white smile,
A white gaze,
Blues eyes and Blue gloves,
Look Hooyo, I got educated,
I learned to pathologize your knowledge,
Here, I learned prescriptions for your apprehension,
I rehearsed dismissals to your warnings.
I practiced my surrender to their white coats,
His white smile,
Her white gaze,
Their blue eyes and blue gloves.
