Veronica Tucker

Borderless

We try to draw lines
but the paper resists.
Every border curls
into a question.

What is a country,
really, if not a breath
held too long?

I touch your name
and break it into syllables
neither of us know
how to pronounce.

And the land forgets
how to hold its shape.
And the river climbs
a bit too high toward
an unrecognizable heaven.

Even the sky itself
refuses allegiance.
Clouds simply wander
like old stories
told sideways.

Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician based in New Hampshire. Her writing draws from her experiences in medicine and everyday life, often exploring themes of uncertainty, memory, and meaning. Her poems appear in redrosethorns, Eunoia Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and others. She is especially interested in poetry that leans into ambiguity and resists easy resolution.