Kailah Peters is an emerging African American writer who studies creative writing at DePaul University. She writes with Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand around Chicago. Her work was debuted in Rigorous Magazine.

Heart Gazing

Hannah says, “I want to see my heart.”
I lay them on the ground
and place a potted plant above their abdominal aorta,
right below their solar plexus.
With every pulse, the plant shakes.
Rising and falling as steady as the tides.
“This is your heart,” I say.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”