Stat
July 6 2010


I do not know
if this is my future, or my past.
Am I child again,
unable to reach the shelf,
indentured
to everyone else’s whim?
Or frail, infirm,
all agency stripped?

I have memorized
each fire-resistant ceiling tile.
I have followed the outside light
for hours,
watching it angle up the wall
beyond my feet.
And for too long to notice
anymore,
have surrendered all modesty.

I am awakened
at some ungodly hour
by the clatter of breakfast carts,
chatter from the nursing station
handing their patients off.
And the jagged sounds of night
in blinking beeping darkness.
The graveyard shift,
attended by doctors, desperate for sleep.
By nurses, who prefer
the dead of night —
the steady pace,
the privacy.
When time goes even slower,
and the ward seems intimate
monastic
fantastical.

The TV looms
like a busily flickering
with its non-stop nattering.
So I read.
I imagine weightless worlds
self-rule
breathing unheated air.
Drugs drip into my veins,
a phantom sleep
overtakes me.

I need to be turned.
I wait.
Something I have not learned well,
despite so much practice.
I drift forward, I drift back,
unable to be of help.