Red dust clung to his moccasins as the bus groaned east. Behind him, mesas hummed; wind drummed songs through cedar bones. In white hospital halls, he stitched wounds gently, his people’s breath guiding each thread. Pine Ridge pulsed within him, steady, sorrowed, sacred, a heartbeat he would never unlearn.

David A. Lee was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and is a physician and poet whose work bridges medicine and memory. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in In Parentheses, The Shore, and Rattle. He trained at the Mayo Clinic and lives in Texas.