It’s not MS, she said,
as we held our breath—
my knee slow to show reflex,
my shoulder collapsing when pressed.
I went in for what I thought was a trap pull,
for what I still can only describe as cadaver-like
cold patches piss-streaming my legs, for her to hold
my hand and say it’s all going to be okay. Instead, I found
her single negative halting, haunting in the glare of winter daylight—painroot wrought from spine and scapula to each of my carpal bones. It’s not MS—a definitive from which came many derivatives:
a stack of vials alive with me, poems about sunrise
not about bright beginnings.
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Excerpted from Blue Opening by Chet’la Sebree. Copyright © 2025 Chet’la Sebree. Published with permission from Tin House Books, an imprint of Zando, LLC.
Chet’la Sebree
Chet’la Sebree is the author of Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress. Raised in the mid-Atlantic, she earned an MFA in creative writing, with a focus in poetry, from American University. Chet’la’s poetry and prose have appeared in Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, Lit Hub, Pleiades, Guernica, Poetry International, and The Yale Review. Currently, Chet’la is an assistant professor of English at George Washington University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Randolph College. Her debut essay collection is forthcoming from The Dial Press in 2026.
