David Anson Lee

Lantern in the Sclera

I hover over a globe of blood and light,
a teenager’s eye shattered like spun glass.
Minutes ago, I scrolled my phone while monitors beeped,
and now the iris is a thin wound,
fragile as a prayer I cannot offer.
The attending moves beside me, calm and precise.
Her hands do not tremble; mine do,
and every blink from him asks the question
I cannot answer: why did I let this happen?
I leave with gloves sticky and conscience heavier than lead,
the city outside humming like it knows nothing of right or wrong.

Retina of Witness

The ambulance wheezes in;
a mother clutches her child, blood like ink on skin.
I peer through the slit lamp, the world shrunk to a red circle.
Other surgeons joke, check charts, ask about coffee,
while I see what they cannot see:
the betrayal in every unnoticed fracture,
every second of inattention in a system that claims care but delivers chance.
I suture tiny veins and nerves,
but morality is a wound I cannot stitch.
At night, I replay the hands I’ve watched fail,
the promises broken by authority,
and I wonder if witnessing is its own kind of crime.

Afterimage

He blinks against the light,
a stranger whose vision I try to patch together
while sirens echo beneath the hospital roof.
I remember a patient last month, a distracted driver,
the eye mangled in ways no lens could restore.
I worked, precise, my gloves damp with guilt,
and no procedure can erase the knowing
that someone else’s recklessness became my moral ledger.
Outside, the city pulses, indifferent.
Inside, I am counting afterimages of the wrong I cannot undo,
each blink a ghost, each tear a ledger,
and still I operate, as if hands could heal conscience.

David Anson Lee is a physician and emerging poet. Drawing on years in trauma ophthalmology, he explores the ethical and emotional complexities of medical practice, transforming moments of moral struggle, human fragility, and unexpected revelation into prose poems that illuminate the weight of responsibility and the resilience of the human spirit.