1.
i tell myself
this is a tentative burial –
almost like those paranoid victorians
who built their coffins with escape hatches
and channels large enough to transport
sausages and leather bibles –
(the kind of trinkets that might comfort
a sleeping man mistaken for a corpse)
and attached brass bells to buried limbs,
making sure that if a body fell awake –
there’s been a terrible mistake!
the whole town would be woken by its song
and when I think about it like this
it almost seems adventurous
to fossick myself away, humming
illness is a deviation from the social contract
to hand the nurse my braids, my bootstraps –
greet my roommates, draw the covers tight –
and fantasize
about my exhumation
2.
each day we stuff our puff-feet into shoes,
and head downstairs to ex0rcise,
and swallow cigarettes,
and speak to the manager
(sir, why
- is this spring air / swollen and malicious
- is the scent of soup / a personal insult
- do I not yet / function / as advertised)
somehow each of us will acquire a pedometer – and
somehow one of us will grin – and explode gently
i’m in pain! i’m your greyhound!
no, not sleek – not swift –
but – one of them dead ones –
accidentally shot by the starting gun!
3.
one day, outside the hospital,
the line of visitors snakes round the block!
they bring files and fish oil tablets baked into sponge cakes
and kitchen shears, to cut ties with –
one day, inside the hospital,
the nurse rigs up the machine –
this won’t hurt – you’ll barely feel –
the elastic band PINGing against your mind’s eye
the machine beams messages to the little woman
trapped in the crawl-space between my skull and my vertebrae –
she is hauling herself forward elbow by elbow –
she – deserves – a raise –
4.
in sleep, i unfurl my limbs
back and forth in time like feelers –
tearing clean through my coffin –
all that state-supplied cotton –
and / when / I / rise
i take lean strides in long skirts
wielding an elegance, a cleanliness
to cut through all this mess –
i bleach bedsores, i front parades
miss very important patient
miss skilled service user
miss known absconder –
good at untangling silk knots
5.
before I leave, the doctor asks to keep
my fat heart – his new panic button
my hot mouth – a neat paperweight
and snuffs the incense in my tomb
is this what happens? i ring the bell,
and they return me to my teenage bedroom
where I sift through litter and old love notes
like a nurse inspecting a stranger’s wound –
(this won’t hurt –
you’ll barely feel –)
Ruby Hillsmith 