The lights shining right onto my face have finally been turned off. I double-check my bed's position - too upright and I'll have trouble falling asleep, too low and my back will ache. I ask for one last drink of water, but take just a sip and place the cup on the bedside table. It will have to last me the night. The man in the bed opposite mine is still on the phone, conversing in deep tones. It is joined every now and then by an outburst of piteous groaning from the old man near the window, restrained by lashes so he cannot get up and pull out the catheter leaking dark yellow ***** into the bag on the floor by his bed.

I drift off into a restless sleep, roused every few hours for my vitals to be measured. Your heart rate is low, every nurse says. Athlete's heart. It's as reassuring as the cool night air, the silent peace when even the mentally unstable moaning old man is asleep (he wakes muliple times throughout the night, moaning himself hoarse and back into slumber). The nurses come and go, gowned wraiths cloaked in the semi-darkness gliding with their equipment and medicine trolleys. The red fluid level in the tube by my side heaves with each breath I take. Alarmed, I wave someone over to tell me that the blood will not flood back into my lungs.

Mornings creep from the windows into the room, no more than a purple light that turns to orange, then white. The chill of the night gives way to a steadily rising warm humidity that seems to dilate time, the minutes worming into sore patches of my torso from laying too long without changing position. I waste away bedridden, lung collapsing further. The course of the day contains little more than still more waiting in vain for good news, interspersed with bland meals that I painfully finish, hunched in a half-sitting position with a limp left upper body. The ward comes to life again, a sickly bustling blur. The slow heat lingers several more hours after the last visitors have gone, long past sunset. There is scant comfort here but sleep, yet even that never comes easily.

To err on the side of caution here is not to try at all
Fold, unfold and refold to stare at clipped wings
With the icy squalls and treacherous winds
Perhaps not to fly is a blessing after all
Tarry not, come whispers from lonesome depths
Subterfuge is no sin for a weary heart
To receive and not give and not come apart
Only the lucky and the naive dare take the plunge
Down the crimson stained ravines in which the fallen still lie fresh
Dashed on jagged edges of lovers' valleys steep
Embitterment on their tongues as the rocks on jellied flesh
Plagued with numbness by day and nightmares in sleep
Lock, unlock and relock this sepulchre of emotion then
Let me out of here and perish with these thoughts
Tread forbidden paths all over their souls
They crisscross like passions and tangle in knots
Unscathed forevermore, immortal be the insouciant

Desolation comes like some huge gaping maw
It swallows you whole, smiles and laughter and all
Makes you want to curl up and cry your eyes raw
Down into insecurity's depths you fall

But at every tunnel's end there will be light
A rainbow smiling above after each storm
Beauty in the dark corners graced by your sight
Cold winter days end in a bed soft and warm

You have strength yet, untapped deep within your mind
Feed embers of hope with the sparks from your friends
Above all, love yourself and soon you'll find
You're just fine (and there's no need to make amends)

Some grant release in the same way as an emptying of bowels
Temporal relief slightly soured by recurrence worries

Some as shadows unnoticed in the midday sun
Gradually shortening until they lie beneath your feet and
You only realise they're gone when you look hard
Maybe by the time you notice mere minutes are left

Others, as smoke; your scrabbling fingers net naught but wisps
Too hopelessly material to stem estrangement
Watch, as they dissipate. Surely and slowly

Yet not all go that way. Some waft back in spectral flashes
In random corners brief phantasms recur, memories of places and traces in people
You will be strangers with polite smiles for greetings, faux familiarity distilled from tenuous acquaintances

And the last we painfully hate and crave:
The accidental auroras, sky-splashed above the lone wanderer
Lullabies of brilliance and bewitching beauty
Your breath is swept along in their wake and when you finally find it again it is all that's left
A lost stirring awakens in your gut, a giddy cocktail of emotion
The sweet aftertaste twists to regretful desire that sears a cruel bitterness deep

It was the sea shallow
Deep with sediment
Memory; adrift in tide
Sand moats and small dams
Crumbling with each pull
Rebuilt before the last sunset
Backwash - cracked shells and polished stones
Some pretty in dull coats
Sea spray salt deposits
Woundless but itching
Caving mounds silenced
Nightfall exorcises the waves
Ghosts surge and cease: lunar
Ebb and tide resumes anew
I shall set down the *****

By my own contrivance (or not)
Cloaked in some distant shroud obscure
There was a little fire (I thought)
Floating, phantom angler's lure
Will-o'-the-wisp on brittle ice
Beguiling in its sinuous prance
Waiting for lost souls to entice
With symphonies of fervent dance
With final breaths it doth abscond
An elemental Charon, gone
To the bottom of its frozen pond
And endless sleep without a yawn
Breathlessness of ebullient flight
Effervescent, long out of sight