AT THE HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL CARE
O this dome of sadness
How to be a pupil placed
in it, be a pupil of it
Today I will learn how to hoist her onto the board
*
I go to tumble-dry the blankets so they’ll be warm
when we wrap your hands, say hi to the man who has none
He’s watching The Bold and the Beautiful at maximum volume
in the common room, a Sears Catalogue and Blood Glucose Diary
inert in his lap. Soon you will wake up with your brow
furrowed, say, I was sleeping. Yes, I’ll say, you were.
Then a little later, I was in a terrible accident.
Yes, I’ll say again. You were.
*
By her bed
The pain makes her gray
Lips coming off in strips
The fight to keep her teeth from decay
Arjo, Oscar Boots
The new words for today
*
You hate the holiday décor, it’s obtrusive
and aggressively secular—
Cut-outs of manic snowmen, oversized
peppermint patties made of Styrofoam.
A nurse offers me a sugar cookie shaped
like a pine tree, heavy with green icing
while I wait for them to finish your bowel routine.
The American Movie Channel is showing a Western—
hot brunette in a nightshirt, blue ribbons, big tits,
some cattle swimming across a river. The nurses sit
in a circle, picking at the cookies, complaining—justly—
about their hours, while Celine Dion wonders
Why can’t it feel like Christmas all the time
on the hallway speakers.
*
Exiled to the common room while they wash her
Just me and the guy with stumps. He asks Nurse Marta
for a glass of water, Marta who is so happy
because her son is finally moving in
with his girlfriend. It’s a start, she winks at us.
The man with stumps says nothing, leans forward
to itch his head on the table, then takes a long drink
of water, from the longest straw
*
This is my favorite time here—
you asleep, me keeping watch.
In the low light I try to make out
the notes posted on pastel paper:
SOFT COLLAR IN BED ONLY. PURÉE DIET.
TURN HEAD AND TRUNK TOGETHER.
Outside: two birds at the feeder.
*
She says she’ll shoot herself if she’s in this kind of pain tomorrow
All I can think to say is, Luckily we don’t have the utensils for that kind of thing in here
I can’t make her smile, I miss her
good color, her happiness
She calls her mouth a trainwreck
I stare at the trumpet of white and red amaryllis
No machetes here, no international villains
No chartable march toward health or death
Just the eternal present of a single body
being driven insane by pointless pain
In this dead air place
She still breathes