What is Left, by Christopher Kim

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

What is Left interrogates the distance between flesh and warmth, between sinew and silence. What is left of our bodies in waiting rooms, in the aftermath of diagnoses, in the darkness of an empty house? What remains when language falters?

These poems chart the erosion of time and the weight of absence, asking how the body carries both loss and persistence. In the stark fluorescence of an operating room, tenderness becomes proof of survival.

Drawing from the language of medicine, memory, and myth, What is Left traces the contours of both grief and resilience: a father tracks mud into a hospital lobby; the self becomes both wound and weapon. Here, flesh is ephemeral but softness lingers.

With precise lyricism, these poems make an incision into the lexicon of loss, reviving a space where what is gone may speak yet. What is Left lingers where memory takes root and where the body, despite everything, still reaches for light.

Christopher Kim is a research assistant at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University who is passionate about medical humanities, ‘60s rock music, and comedy. His poetry has been published in Neurology, Anesthesiology, Academic Emergency Medicine, and more. He recently graduated from Stanford University.