The Empathy Exams

by Leslie Jamison

Maybe every time you get into a paper gown you summon the ghosts of all the other times you got into a paper gown; maybe every time you slip down into that anesthetized dark it’s the same dark you slipped into before. Maybe it’s been waiting for you the whole time.

I imagine you in every possible direction, and then I cover my tracks and imagine you all over again. Sometimes I can’t stand how much of you I don’t know.

But it’s exhausting to keep tabs on how much someone is feeling for you. It can make you forget that they feel too.

One comment from a stranger can’t reclaim years spent hating the body you live in.

She was lots of things I’d never be.