Sunday, August 28, 2011

Wards and Words

A pooling of tears
A drip of blood,
Someone's pleural fluid on my shoe

A haze, a daze
Of faces gone by
In this tangled mess of days.

With their heart murmurs, abdominal wounds,
positive blood cultures, hypertensive medications,
referrals to nursing homes.

We feel the weight of their sicknesses
The strain on life and heart and brain
On muscle, sinew, bone.

And their families, lives, selves,
Somehow mingling with mine
In this incessant dash
Between computer key strokes
and constant nursing pages
ringing in my ears.

We are our bodies, in them we bear our sorrows.
We are defined by their suffering
And the responses of our souls
Coupled with the winding, winded scientific replies
We make, with whatever we can find to patch the holes.

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