By Amy Hu

I. Right Atria
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, says the stranger with ravenous eyes who leaves nothing but antepenultimate hangovers in their wake. A practiced clumsiness so sure to charm when married to the easiness about them. In my delirium, I notice their key necklace pressing into my clavicle and coital grief shreds through any semblance of pleasure.
II. Left Atria
There’s a gap in their teeth that I’ve run my tongue over enough times to be endeared by, and it shouldn’t matter except that it does; during Computational Fluid Dynamics, the soft whistle as they suck in a sigh turns the rest of the lecture into a million dusks.
III. Right Ventricle
It takes roughly four seconds for a red blood cell to achieve completed pulmonary circulation and I haven’t made a new friend since middle school. What’s one more lonely medical student in the grand scheme of things?
IV. Left Ventricle
Sleeping in Lady Liberty’s bed means the sun always manages to chase away lingering drowsiness, torturous as the slow roll of bruised hips. Too vulnerable is the admission lying under my appendix that begs for release. I leave coffee — iced Americano with two sugars — next to Junel 1.5/30 and pray their twice-carved name means nothing to echocardiograms.

Amy Hu is a co-founder of Laundromat Literary magazine. Based in Southern California, she spreads her love of writing by tutoring kids in marginalized communities for literacy and maintaining a semi-active Goodreads account.