Hospitals

I hate hospitals 

Their shiny floors

And intolerable beeping

The maze of drs and nurses who are in and out and around

The oil paintings strung up by nails that suggest this to be a happy place 

We walk to room 5022

I see his feet

Rubber gray socks

Lyle.

2.

Mom reaches over during lunch

(They have taken him away for more tests and ultrasounds, checking the messages of his heart and the size of his spleen) 

I tried to leave once 

With the excuse of all I had to get done 

My head spinning 

My eyes raw with holding everything in 

The message on my lips bright and positive 

Lies. 

Mom reaches over for me during lunch

The cafeteria is buzzing 

And wipes at my forehead

I ask her what she is wiping away 

She tells me lines

Worry lines

That have built their way into my skin

3.

Dr Brenner 

Was a quiet man with words that were solid and understandable 

He spoke slowly

It is so we can hear him through the bramble of long delicate words that mean illness and life or death

He gives us good news with some hesitancy 

Not too much good news 

Enough to keep us positive 

Not enough that we can call him a 

Liar.

Grandpa was in good spirits, 

His thigh exposed by the sheet, 

The white loose undies showing just barely on his hip

They hang loose in the buttocks

As they lead him here and there 

He doesn't even think of it

He thinks of how he plans to live longer 

And the French toast he ate this morning

And the pot roast on its way 

When he talks he puts both arms above his head

We can see the tubes and the IV and the oxygen machine

The bruises that suggested 

"Something is wrong in here" 

Our bodies are wonderful companions 

They are with us through all of this 

Life

4. 

Life is marked with so much pain

I see it in all of the halls

In the way the nurses carry Pelicans in their voices 

A large body of things they don't say 

Life is also marked with so much beauty

And I will find it during all of this.