Hospital Time, Day 8

Good Friday

If you close your eyes and open them, close your eyes and open them, close your eyes and open them, you can float to the ceiling, twirl, look down and all around, catch a cloud, dance to a beat or beep. So many beeps. I’m sitting here next to Sophie on day eight, somewhat dissociated but also right here right now, my words measured I am, (strangely), fine, my heartbeat regular, my hands nimble enough to knit (k6, k2 p1 k3 p3 row 68), a growing pile of blue in my lap. There’s a sun spot on the floor to stand in when it’s time to get up and stretch the legs, there’s Middlemarch and licorice (thank you M) the same man who swept the room last year, who carries away the bags of plastic of things hazardous who always smiles and nods his head, his broom quiet, he never lets the metal lid to the linens trash slam like the other one, he is so careful so quiet. Do you want the door closed? the heavy door that slides shut, shutting out, shutting away, a curtain drawn for privacy, in between the poking, the prodding, the changing position, the changing the chuck, the fiddling of dials and dripping of fluids the ventilator wheezing in out in out. The curtain drawn, a world beyond a stage where humans in blue, masked in yellow busy so busy pushing their COWS* pulling on gloves twirling in chairs. Twirling twiddling fiddling. She’s breathing on her own with some oxygen support. Or she’s getting more support or she needs more support. It’s Good Friday. Rain is coming.

For Easter Monday, a poem for those who were once Catholic and believed.

The Palm at the End of the Mind

After fulfilling everything
one two three he came back again
free, no more prophecy requiring
that he enter the city just this way,
no more set-up treacheries.
It was the day after Easter. He adored
the eggshell litter and the cellophane
caught in the grass. Each door he passed
swung with its own business, all the
witnesses along his route of pain
again distracted by fear of loss
or hope of gain. It was wonderful
to be a man, bewildered by
so many flowers, the rush
and ebb of hours, his own
ambiguous gestures - his
whole heart exposed, then
taking cover.

Kay Ryan