The Heaviest White

The Heaviest White is a poetic inquiry into the symbolic and moral weight of the white coat within the landscape of the U.S. maternal mortality. Through layered imagery and reflective narrative, the poem examines silence, complicity, and professional responsibility as they operate within medical authority when mothers die preventable deaths. Centered in a first-person clinician perspective, the piece engages in moral reckoning and self-accountability, positioning eyewitnessing and forensic truth as ethical acts within clinical practice. Rather than presuming to hold institutions accountable on its own, the poem invites clinicians, researchers, and readers into justice-oriented reflection—particularly in relation to the disproportionate and enduring loss of Black women. By weaving together clinical insight and creative expression, The Heaviest White challenges its audience to confront the emotional and ethical burden carried by medicine and to imagine a future in which no woman dies unseen, unheard, or unremembered.