My first impression of the children's hospital was how nice everything was. It was new, with fish tanks and red sofas; pastel windows which made pretty colors on the floor when the sun went through them; walls were freshly painted and everyone talked with a smile. Everything just looked so peaceful.
It wasn't until my second visit that I saw the flaws. I was sitting on one of the red couches, waiting for my name to be called, and I was looking at the fish tank. A little girl was pressed up to the glass telling her mother that she could see nemo. But when I looked closer, I saw a little fish turned over floating at the surface. A man behind the glass quickly pulled it out of the tank, but I saw. That's when I started noticing other things. Like the bloodstain on the cushion next to me. And the fact that a few tiles were missing from the floor. The wood paneling had scratches on it; one of the pastel windows was taped up; and every parent was smiling, but the little kids holding on to them kept asking what was wrong.
Maybe that's just how hospitals are. They want you to think that everything's okay; that all that goes on inside are couches and fishtanks. They think that if they write out the word HOSPITAL in bubbly pink letters people might get it into their brains that everything's okay. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a hospital. Masking pain only works for so long, until broken bits and pieces push their way through.
I think hospitals are just fish tanks. Everyone is put on display for doctors and visitors and things seem okay for a while, you know, until they aren't. When a little nemo dies, they send away his body and just replace him with another orange fish that people can look at. We are all the cracks in the pavement; elevators shut down for repair; a phantom pain that nobody wants to believe is real. If you stand far enough away; if you distance yourselves from anything close to the word hospital, you can just let yourself focus on the mask they put up. But once it's time, and you're sitting on a red couch in the lobby of the children's wing, with a kid asking you where her older brother went, you'll find yourself staring at the cracks in the facade with a single tear running down your face and with emptiness in your stomach.

I will not be the punchline.
I will not be the definition of the joke you aimlessly threw at me.
I remember in school when people would tell me that sticks and stones may break my bones but words would never hurt me.
I can't help but feel the words hurt me.
And maybe the broken bone would hurt more than the words they threw at me, but a broken bone would always heal.
But the words?
They didn't
They would stay with me until I started loving myself.
And even then, they'd always be at the back of my mind.

I pull my blanket close to me, as if all hope is gone.
My lungs ache as I try not to cry.
My blanket doesn't quite cover my feet and the frustration overwhelms me.
It reminds me of trust. No matter how much we stretch it or pull it, it won't cover my feet.
It leaves us with cold feet.
Just like how you might trust someone and you think all is okay, but then something doesn't feel quite right and your feet are left cold.
About how you got the blanket to keep you warm and it doesn't really serve its purpose.

As a child i was taught
That joy and happiness were
Off the menu
Instead I was force-fed
Hatred and demise
And while  the neighbourhood kids
Played in my view all I
Could do was cry
So I cried
I spent days upon weeks
Drowning I  the tears
That had leaked from my
Cracked pipeline eyes
And there's alot that drowning
Can teach a boy
It taught me for instance
How to swim
And I tried so hard to swim
To escape the pain I woke to and
And dozed to
And I tried so hard to get someone to
Notice.
I tried so hard for someone to
Gasp in unbearable amazement
But if there's anything else that drowning Taught me,
its that nobody cares.
So I continue to cry
Because when it comes down to it
It's better not to try

I stare into the facade of the hospital,
and I stub out my cigarette with my rubber soles.
I enter and the air is sterile and the scent of death slowly emerges from the poor souls.
I look around and I see limp bodies in wheelchairs and skinny frames sat on chairs and I suddenly feel out of context, as if I'm an ant who walked into a termite colony.
I find myself in a situation where children are weaving through doctors and nurses trying to make the most of their time.
The window is cracked, and the fish is dead.
The paint worn away and a splatter of blood on the floor underneath my seat.
"Where did my brother go?" A young child asks me.
I suddenly feel clueless with an empty feeling inside yearning to be nurtured. My eyes water and I simply reply,
"I do not know"

Dear J,
   I may be at a loss for words half the time, and the other half I might have too much to say, but I can almost always say this; I love you. I have felt fear and I have felt bravery and I have felt loss. I can look pictures of us and I can recall everything we did that day. I can listen to videos of you and I can tell what you felt. And I know that you didn't think I was paying attention, but I knew how you looked when you thought something was unfair. And I knew the look in your eyes when you saw the light just right in a sunset and you knew that nothing could ever be recreated quite like that. I felt the same way about you.
   Wherever you are, know that loving someone isn't a matter of feeling something or not feeling something. It's a matter of knowing what you're feeling and when you need to let go.
   I think that people know that letting go involves unfurling your fingers and watching something fall from a great height. It's the act of following that objects downward motion that gets to us. That once it meets the ground or whatever surface it is deemed to hit, it's gone. What was there is gone. And once you think about that you think of what could have been there. That one last touch, that one last feeling of bliss that comes with knowing that the moment you wake up the sun will be shining in rivulets through fingers that tangle in hair fresh off the pillow. It's sad to know that nothing like that will happen again.
   The sun won't shine the same way. Instead it may simply fall. It won't cascade, it won't flow over the edges of noses or smiling lips. It's the same way water may lose a stone from a riverbed and from there on after it doesn't run quite the same way. But another stone, another pebble will fall in place because replacement happens.
   I guess what I'm trying  to say, is that letting go is letting someone else take a spot. In order for something else to happen you have to let your joints move out of their grip and unfold from their hold on something that wasn't meant to be held by you anymore.
   Sometimes you have to let them land somewhere new.
I only hope that it's somewhere even more beautiful than before.
            Claire

I'm surrounded by a sea of people
As far as the eye can see
All flowing in the same direction
And just floating along, is me

I've been wading in this water
Letting it carry me any way
Not caring about which direction
And never having any say

After wading all this time though
My legs started growing tired
So finally it was time to choose
Which direction I desired

But the problem with floating along
Was that I never became aware
I wasn't really a part of the waves
I was just sort of...there

What I wanted didn't matter
The waves still moved as one
Whether I moved with or against them
Didn't matter in the long run

Then I thought I better get out
And give myself some time to think
But I couldn't see the shore anymore
And with that, I started to sink

Now I'm surrounded by a sea of people
As far as the eye can see
All still flowing in the same direction
But drowning in it, is me