HOSPITAL: The First Few Days and Nights in April 2015
A
male nurse pushed a hospital cart;
it
squeaked and chattered.
The
intravenous drip beside me
was
a quickly beating clock.
Someone’s
insistent cough,
without
words, was talk.
Around
the place of healing,
just
beyond comprehension,
muffled
voices, a laugh.
You
become a sentinel
in
the restful night
you
are not having;
no
peace in hospital.
What
does a night guard do?
He
stands and thinks.
He
is the prisoner of thinking.
Or
maybe he’s the patient
observing
himself because
he
senses that a patient
craves
attention – or distraction.
Although
he is captive
and
flattened in a bed,
he
watches over all
while
his eyelids fall.
Purple
danger
Death
Blood
palpa-patating
heart
Night
beep beep beep
frost
pita-tapup
eats me up
chew
my heart
fang
ice night
I
slip under
cold
waters
seals
eye me
death
eats my toes
blue
wedding
of
my soul, from the red
walls
of my mama’s womb
to
this cold good-bye
Then
the nurse Corazon
comes
and wakes me before dawn
and
wipes my body clean
and
gives me fresh blue pajamas
that
I don for this April Fool’s Day,
It
may be torture when they work
a
hose through my nose down
to
my stomach, but nothing like
those
being force-fed on Guantanamo.
Liquid
pumped in, then slowly
pumped
out. You know to say,
“If
it must be done, it must be done.”
You
are applique, sewn to your bed
with
needles and hoses
by
nurses and doctors and students
who
come with questions
and
testings. You are the center
of
attention, a zero, the empty
center,
a depression on the bed.
No
one knows how to turn off
the
bed built to massage, little hills,
like
trapped animals, moving
around
inside the mattress.
You
feel seasick,
caught
in the bed’s backwash
beside
the whirling stream
of
sweet helpers with magical names,
from
the Ukraine, the Phillipines,
and
Spanish-speaking countries,
places
with magical names.
The
last morning, mi Corazon
drapes
a chair with a white sheet,
and
directs me to sit there
by
the black window,
and
the cold black block of night,
when
I’m not looking, finally yields
to
the wide generous hand of light.
The
sun slides down to caress
the
houses of the avenues
that
lead to the ocean.
Purple
light comes,
then
white waves, made crisp
by
the angle of morning light.
The
expert sun delineates the parts
of
the day. The cones
on
the pines outside the window
are
enameled gold.
I
am allowed to eat breakfast.
The
intravenous needles and tubes
are
hanging loose, disconnected,
and
soon I may go home,
my
body hair stripped away
by
myself from many adhesive
strips
and buttons, as the many sweet
helpers,
loathe to do so,
make
me inflict my own pain.
