wind quartz
hands rubbing the soft linen cloth
at the wrist-tie, stiff at the edge,
and I clutch—
fluorescent sheen on oily hair
as I look into the deathly hum
of the hospice
on my sleeves, the white browning,
like touched gardenias, unfurling
their sickness from the dead center,
breathing the air around them,
patients looming, petals folding
with the twitching of my wrist
waking blue in the yellow room,
nurses' headers and gowns drift by,
moving like white cells through this place
this purgatory—as they pass,
and I a frowning, bent thing,
head bowed, hands held in the air,
magnetized upward
as if pulled by a pathologist
to show the grimy edge of this
my heart thrusts in undulant pulses,
to the rhythm of nurses looking,
a sense of what is to come—
I hear it in my sleeves: rot
corpsing into white buttons,
pores betraying me, bleeding out
a coarse, dull, slickening fluid
marking the edge of my wrist,
like paranoia preying on veins,
I am too afraid to touch it.
alone, I showcase this crutch,
show what kind of sick blood
I bleed as I lie here sweating,
normalcy dripping of my face
I am a sickly, limping thing,
half-dead and breathing in this chair,
some need to display myself
to the peanut crunching crowd,
as if all that remains of me
is to step forward and confess
and I, for some reason,
pull back the curtain of dignity
my sweater tries to cover—
unveil the sweat-wet, fraying ends
of these white sleeves,
rolling them back.
Show I am special,
but who needs to hear that
in a mental ward right now.
exotic knoll
humble prism
