Her face was like a brown paper bag
crumpled and scraped
as each inhalation stretched the fissures:
cracked rib and half-healed scars.
Alone, one whizz-popping lightbulb runs its buzz of commentary
as her frail collection of bones and sinews
are still, swaddled and set as they were
inside layers of thin, donated linen.

She is my mother.
  or sister.
  or child.

  "He kicked them in."
The thinnest whisper, the smallest gasp of pain
"I told them that yesterday"
  "Where were you yesterday?"
  "Here" she said. "I came and they just gave me pills,

sent me away."

Triage ignores us for 2 more hours.
Two hours with 3 broken ribs
and 2 raw knees
The side of her face a bloody mess
the kiss of concrete dried but fresh
and the thought of his laugh from behind
in the dark.

Time ticks to fill the space
as every available cot in the city
is claimed.

"If I had a place to stay,"
She says
"At least,
he might have used the bed instead, you know?"


Above the buzz
The echo of that dead refrain...
The rapping of her eyes on the unopened door...


My once warm heart
knows no cold like this.

I feel the wind as it whistles through new cracks.

06/26/2008

Posted on 06/27/2008
Copyright © 2024 Trisha De Gracia