It is morning. You lay in the kitchen.
You were not supposed to wake up, but you have.
Drops of metallic drool drip down your chin.
Someone shakes you and then your eyes open;
all you see is blurred and a hazy grey.

“Mrs. Hughes?”

She is upset. She moves your head back
and forth and you want to beg her to stop this
godforsaken movement, but her fingers are so cold
from outside that you can’t open your mouth comfortably.

“Mrs. Hughes, where are the children?”

and at once you have two thoughts:

First: I am no longer a Hughes. I have
exorcised that name from my life

and second: My goodbye should have lasted.
Me a shadow they forget after nightfall.

“Someone find them. They must be upstairs.”

And you feel relieved because they are. Will their room
be cold and full of – what kind of air?

You sense the crisp air seeping in through
the window and door at the end of the hall.
It begs to cover your body, a body you thought
would be dead-stiff by now.
They must have unhinged the mouth of the cave.

You were not supposed to wake up. You were
not supposed to be carried toward the ambulance,
growing more alert, smelling the antiseptic of the van.
You were supposed to be senseless.

How does it feel to once again fail? To have this extra
line of life thrown out to you? To not even
belong in death but to such clarity?

Weeks, maybe months from now,
when you get out of the hospital,
you know you will be back on the floor
with the baby, washing the toddler’s hair in the tub.
It will still be cold out, your fingers
will still type, your estranged husband will
still hover over your flat,
peek in now and again.

They put you into the ambulance and you surrender
as the loser in this game. You turn
your head away and close your eyes to the sun
which shines so bright on the London snow.

11/25/2004

Author's Note: The last in the Sylvia series - the most daring one, I believe... it takes a helluva lot of guts to write as if she HAD survived...

Posted on 11/25/2004
Copyright © 2024 Lisa Marie Brodsky