Strapped to a gurney, I watched the sky frown and close behind me

as the ambulance pulled away from the civilized world

just hours after our new president was named. Homeless, broke,

I would never see a bill from this visit

and I would also never have my democratic say. Now,

nearly a term later, my daughter and I sit

at Denny’s Diner considering candidates, as she stares into her phone

reading their values and plans. I tell her stories

about how Medicare saved me, the importance of listening,

and all the reasons not to follow the voting advise of her dad.

There are many women like me I say, remembering the moment

the psychiatrist wrote PTSD and handed me a script

for medication to level serotonin. Mere hours earlier her father

had stated emphatically that this was not his fault, not

his responsibility, that the years of pounding and thrashing, screaming

and threatening were all in my head. He was right—

a few scribbles on paper to confirm this, and the gaping silence

of family and friends—my packed bag plunked down

on a floor next to a hospital bed as the skin on my legs began itching

from not shaving. This morning,

I poke at the stack of pancakes swimming in syrup

as my daughter lifts her eyes in revelation: Mom! I know who I’m voting for!

I smile, Yeah? Yeah, she says. At eighteen, she leans into me, telling me

often I am the only parent she can trust.

We finish our coffee and stare out the window. I still don’t know

who to vote for this primary; I only know

who not. She breaks my contemplation with the inevitable question

after a long explanation of Medicare-for-All

during which the clouds shallow and part losing their possession

of this unusually warm Michigan spring day: Who will you

vote for Mom? The servers and cooks clink and shuffle

behind us, their jocular demeanor exposing our northern vulnerability

to a little bit of post-winter sun. I didn’t see the sky outside

that hospital room for almost three days, or even realize it’s happening.