I look at it with different eyes now,
and see it for what it truly is.
A dying place.

To leave ones house, ones home,
leave a life out there in the living place,
never to return.
To squeeze out a space and settle into dying.

There's the constant stench of stale ***** and constipated excrement.
The unconscious moans of the unfortunate discarded souls,
those “I don't know what else to do with him” bundles of flesh
that lay fetal on their last beds.

The aged, fully cognizant eyes,
staring at too loud plasma screens,
incapable of fulfilling their dreams.
Locked in a body
too decrepit to live,
too alive to die.

Do I say hello? Or rudely say “how are you today?”
I walk the halls and feel so out of place
for I..... can leave,
I can ride my bike with the wind on my face,
I can live free in my living place.
They glance at me as I walk by as if to say,
your day will come,
my dying space here in this dying place
will be yours someday.

I no longer hear the moans now,
they have melded with the disinfectant,
Wheel of Fortune, chicken *** pie,
squeaking wheelchairs in the hall.
I have become a member of this dying place,
I am the free one from the living place,
the one that visits his 97 year old Mother
with the broken hip.....