life's for the living - hospital perspective

christmas. telephone. pipe bomb. 

you learned to play with nonsense words instead of the sharp reality of pain when you were five years old: spinning icicle, bubble gum, and puppy dog through the fires glowing in your head. ribbons of vocabulary at a bonfire dance. one hollow needle in a plural space, and the words marching band and inquiry explode behind tiny eyelids. the days pass in scalpels, feeding tubes, and books carefully selected from the pediatrics ward library.

you are a grown up now; something you never imagined would happen. you've somehow made it here with more and less words than you've ever had. a scarred vein ripping turns 'agony' from a sharp gasp to 'bonfire, gargantuan, loquacious.' someone in the room is screaming. it might be you. the suction tube snakes writhe down your throat, putting your little game to the test.

RedLightCOOKING chickensBOOKS, WORDSBOOKS. three pages into the mental thesaurus and your throat is inflamed. 

each breath feels like a rattling, pathetic attempt to break the tiny chains looping through your dna. maybe it'll be different this time. maybe today is the day that you won't need word games just to be --

apples and ice water dancing with swans on a misty lake. blood everywhere.

am i bleeding? 

the grown up version of the game drowns the bird in the mist, it's slender neck cracked sideways; blood blooming below below the surface to remind you that one day, you will find yourself alone in a room with the person you love the most, and only one of you will be breathing. 

moon light. breakfast cereal. snowflakes. 
please. wait. am i bleeding?

it doesn't matter. just look at yourself; strapped to a bed, spitting crimson, choking on a film of sour plastic and gushing copper. rooster. roller coaster. coastline. the incisions on your chest bleed from the heart, faint beats leaking time into soaked bandages. another sad breath in, a wheeze back out; rattle the chains for two decades and you'll only hear it in your lungs.