September 24, 2017

Sitting with her on the Hospital Bed

Sticky iron, corpuscles
sometimes I nd dried ecks at odd places- not unclean
but I cannot wash myself
enough to set down rumination
-to uncouple as rail cars
leave the freight
on dead end sidings-
signal lights ooze down the line

Living rumpled carpet to
Antiseptic-contaminated answers,
Nourishment snakes
Velocity above me
-but into her wrinkled veins, chains me to who became before:
Demented Demerol Dragon
floundering Poise defeated in
a world let down buzzing

How am I with every
one else
Patient
but me?

Isaac A. Bohannon, MD is an Otolaryngologist at Kaiser Permanente of Washington. Through her writing, she makes meaning from the living and dying moments of her profession.