Subclinical
I walk the world with a locked box
Lodged in my chest. Doctor, it hurts
But not as much as it should. In Bucha,
On the roadway of the Street of Apples
A woman lay four weeks straight
Unburied even by snow. They saw her red
Coat and rolled right over, Russians,
Tanked and vigilant in their to and fro.
Doctor, there’s nothing wrong with me
That isn’t also true of many others.
At night I sleep under a vast epiphany
That hasn’t descended upon me,
Pinpricks that shine a white writing
I can’t read. I don’t want to know
Yet. Instead I ask to stay here, greedy
For the smell of autumn. Before
Leaving, I’ve made a miniature of me
To witness the raising of the sea,
To watch over the unimaginable,
To greet this revelation of a future
With those new names it will need.
Copyright © 2025 by Monica Ferrell. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 15, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I started this poem soon after the invasion of Ukraine began. A story about a woman in the town of Bucha particularly affected me. Then I learned the word subclinical for subclinical depression, not the acute variety that forces tortured souls to take their lives but something we keep going around our days with. I thought of this Woody Allen joke about a restaurant. ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible,’ one woman complains. ‘Yeah, I know,’ the other one replies, ‘and such small portions.’ Even as wretched as life can be sometimes, most of us aren’t ready to leave it. [Saint] Augustine writes that as a young sinner he prayed for God to make him pure but then added, but not yet, since he was still too attached to earthly pleasures. In this poem, those become ‘the smell of autumn.’
—Monica Ferrell
Monica Ferrell
