1. Being the youngest person in every
   waiting room and the way the nurses
   and the other patients look at you with pity
   and fear as if this disease were getting stronger
   by growing earlier in your young flesh
   and you are a reminder that their own children,
   who they love,
   will never be safe.
   That none of us will
   ever really be safe.

2. See #1 

Ally Malinenko is the author of the poetry collection The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press) and the novel This Is Sarah (Bookfish Books). She lives in the part of Brooklyn the tour buses don't come to.