Your voice floods my ears At 6:45 A.M., "Patient Number Four, it's time to do your vitals."
I'm standing in the doorframe of my hospital cubicle-- right hand in yours, the nurse's, left hand in the shredder-- or is that the wire frame that's holding me up like I'm a head on a stake?
"Have you eaten, how long has it been now?" I try to tell you the truth, but my mouth feels miles away, riding on the train that you people call my throat. And my throat has brought me here, to your pristine prison cell because I betrayed it too many times.
"I need to get your vitals, will you come with me?" And how do I know, how do I really know that you are not trying to ****** me with gleaming round numbers and records of compliance, cooperation. How do I know that you are not trying to re-name me in this hospital's file-cabinet language?
"I need you to follow me to the lab." Why are you trying to take me away from myself?-- The self I spent so many years constructing from the bits and pieces of black earth I dug up eagerly, fearlessly.
I cannot move to your white room-- the other flavor of white reserved for nurses, not the oatmeal in my cubicle. I cannot leave this arm with its chewed-up edges or this crime-scene throat with its flapping lid.
"Please give me your arm and make a fist." I already told you, or tried to, I cannot give myself to you. I have given myself away too many times under too many names. And I am tired, so tired, of chasing myself back to Me.
So you drain me right there in the hallway and seal me back up without a kiss-- So I kiss myself on the thick vein you chose and whisper my real name to myself Because I am terrified, so terrified of forgetting it.