‘Go Ahead, Touch Me’ by Elly Katz

Go Ahead, Touch Me

Today as I wake
             I walk carrying        
a narrative carrying an end
                          a gorge                                                                            27 years deep
             dreams made it                                                                         a lid
fragile Saran Wrap we used for bologna sandwiches                 a skin
             graft 
                          inside
the gorge fills up with darkness & darkness’ moonlight
                                       fills up with darkness
& darkness’ scars this body
                                       tills soil of scarcely sorely healed
feelings
             I mean skin I mean
                                        come on touch me already
for I am savage
          

At 27, verging towards a doctorate at Harvard, Elly Katz survived what doctors surmised was unsurvivable: a brainstem stroke from a physician’s needle misplacement. Forthcoming books: creative nonfiction, From Scientist to Stroke Survivor: Life Redacted (Lived Places Publishing) & poetry, Instructions for Selling-Off Grief (Kelsay Books), both in 2025.