VERONICA TUCKER

Still Warm

I carry the cup

from the counter to the sink,

and it leaves a circle

darker than the wood.

Someone else’s hand

held this mug before me.

I feel the ghost-heat

still clinging.

I press my palm

to the mark,

as if I could borrow

whatever they left behind.

Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, mother of three, and lifelong New Englander. Her poetry explores the intersections of medicine, motherhood, memory, and being human. Her work appears in One Art, Eunoia Review, Berlin Literary Review, and in The Book of Jobs anthology. She shares more at veronicatuckerwrites.com