Alexis Rotella

I Knew Before I Knew

Last night, getting ready for bed,
a rash appeared on my face,
the shape of a butterfly.

This morning my blood labs
were waiting.
I scrolled through the first entries,
the usual: normal, normal.

Nothing yet to explain
the splotches on my calves,
the wobbliness,
the way I shrink from sun
through morning windows,

my need to be alone,
waiting for the energy
to paint
at the kitchen counter.

The marks. The mystery.
Not knowing where
the white space is taking me.

Then near the end
of the scrolling:
markers I’d never seen,
some too high, some too low.

And at the very end,
a paragraph about lupus—

inside a forgotten mirror yellow tulips

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About the Author

Alexis Rotella lives in an apartment with a view of the sky at Whitestone Retirement Community in Greensboro, NC. Her companion is a seventeen-pound ginger cat named Colby. For a year she has been acclimating herself to widowhood.

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