VERONICA TUCKER

Veins Like Highways

I used to trace my veins like highways
each one a route out of here.
The blue beneath my skin
felt closer to truth than my own name.

At thirteen, I learned silence
was safer than apology.
I kept my voice folded
like a map I didn’t know how to read.

My mother said I was dramatic,
but I knew the weight of unsaid things.
Knew how they pressed
into the chest like a car parked on your ribs.

There was a year I stopped eating.
A year I wrote letters to people
I hadn’t met yet,
just to practice being known.

Sometimes I still walk past myself
on old sidewalks
a girl staring at the sky,
waiting for a reason not to disappear.

I trace my veins again now,
not to escape,
but to remember
how far I’ve come.

Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician based in New England. Her poems have appeared in Red Eft Review, Eunoia Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly, with additional work forthcoming. She shares her writing at www.veronicatuckerwrites.com and on Instagram @veronicatuckerwrites.