1.
The ED doors slide open:
You’re inside bandaging a wing.
Discussing outside’s snow angel templates.
Dreaming of sleep and your own bellyflop.
2.
The cicadas, the moan, the groan
of machines and phones, the beeps, the geese,
the drone of time like a pantomime,
out with a bedpan tambourine.
3.
The ED doors slide open:
You’re masked, but eyes understand.
Just a small heart needing some air.
A short wooden lollipop with a long ahhh.
4.
Soon with grit of breath of the next,
soon brazen thorns, the next, the next,
soon, by the emergency entrance,
red roses rush the close of doors.
not sure what day this is
it’s a jumble a river like a highway
of Harleys or one constant rumble
the past the past again
the present and today’s your birthday
but just a number more than a few
numbers they call out to you to you in echoes
numbed you don’t even know the calendar
but numbers the tests over and over
same and somehow different
beeping hearts in rooms with numbers
16.
in there for a broken femur
11.
looks like lung cancer but
you have yet to share that news
9.
She has no face you explore caves
canyons to the plains but
10.
that one will soon let go in days one or two
and in years an oak will grow
right through that heart of hers
as time is inclined to do
and despite the blend of figures by then
for sure you will better know
more than numbers numbers but names
now you just want them cured as you go
moment to moment to remember
more than what day this is
Artwork courtesy of Youssef ElNahas
