Before Me, A poem by Marci Daniels

She looked closer at her uncle’s hospital room and wondered if all people had to endure dying in this way. There were cheerful bright butterfly and flower stickers stuck up haphazardly on the pinkish-white walls and inspirational posters commanding patients to “Cheer up!” She wondered if the man on the hospital bed could have ever

Underway. Shift colors.

The crew topside watched as the steady unseen force of the tug’s propellers made it seem as though the pier was pulling away from them. Their families and whatever comforts they might be leaving behind were moving away and would soon, for a time and of necessity, be forgotten…

The unspoken rule of any bathroom shared by a dozen or more women is that nothing must ever come into contact with the floor of the bathroom. The bathroom in Berthing Five, the ship’s Ops and Combat female berthing, was no different.