Catching Up

by Whitnee Coy

I’ve never been good
at math, the jumbling of numbers
of any kind; and yet

here I am mentally subtracting
2.5 months from your actual age
at any given second to discover
your adjusted age—

a concept before you that
I never knew existed. While you
exist in your actual age, white coats
until the age of two will only see you
as adjusted.

There was a period after you were born,
your doctors didn’t even view you
as alive. There was nothing to compare
you to, a developing baby not yet
on its own. How could a baby, supposed to be
still in the womb develop skills
like breathing and swallowing
10 weeks early? Outside and disconnected
from life and still living?

November 26th, 2023
was supposed to be your birthday
& now on computer-typed forms
& certificates & conversations
or party invitations it will always say
September 17th, 2023.

Your pediatrician, teary-eyed
thumbed through paperwork
to tell us after months
of tube feedings, syringes of medicine,
IVs, blood test pricks, eye exams
you had made it to the 3rd percentile
of your actual age.

You were finally alive.

***

Whitnee Coy, from Lexington, Kentucky, now resides in South Dakota with her family and enjoys doing stick-poke tattoos with her husband. An MFA graduate from Eastern Kentucky University, she is pursuing an Ed.D in Education Policy. Whitnee is an award winning poet & children’s book author with three published poetry chapbooks (SD State Poetry Society, Finishing Line Press, & Alien Buddha Press) and one forthcoming (Finishing Line Press) in 2025. She also published in 2024 her award-winning children’s book, Elsie’s Adventures to Brainy Cove, a social-emotional learning tale. She is a professor at Oglala Lakota College, a tribal college on the Pine Ridge Reservation.