last call,
she wrote, with her fingertips still tangled in the wire wrapped around her faulty heart.

each breath laced with shards of glass, an aching pull that was simple in the darkened sheets and quiet. an answer that seemed too simple because there was no question.

i'm dying,
she cried as her hands slipped on the tear-slicked phone that couldn't quite convey the way that she was trying to be so, so brave with each labored breath.

there were no words in the screams that pounded off the yellowing linoleum.
a desperate, hoarse cry pleading that she needed someone on the other end of the static to wipe the sweat off of her brow and call an ambulance.

when are you coming home?
little bouncing ponytail of four is grasping fingers and trying to fix injuries with whole-wheat goldfish. her pink salt-scuffed snow boots are breaking hearts down the hall.

and i'm here again. once cheery monkey slippers worn through the toes shuffle down hallways lined with trepidation and antiseptic. this isn't old-fashioned, white-apron clad matrons grasping hands and adjusting crisp peaked hats. medicine is doled out in plastic sheets like candy, accompanied by bent knees and scanned bracelets.

privacy concerns, signed waivers, no liabilities. hospitals are less for healing and more holding cells, storage lockers, fraught with too-thorough questionnaires and grasped pens like swords defending trustee boards from lawsuits.

my mornings are finger ****** and sunlight that seems empty without those sweet trills and a whipping reach of wind. stagnant air, the faint smell of ***** hiding under regulation bleach wipes. this is what i wake up to. soft chimes aren't rousing, nor soft, at eight am lulled through too-new loudspeakers.

the ***** mint green trays never lose that sickly smell of rotten food like the undergrowth of a fallen tree. the only coping skills i've mastered this far are how to effectively channel all my breathing solely through my mouth. hospitals never lose that smell, the ache of death and sorrow that clings to the floorboards and plays cards under the bed, waiting for its turn to reach corners much further than the cleaning crew can.

eyes draw to the torn edge of my sweater, revealing the milky white skin that lost it's sweetness. i've been ravaged by needles and rubber tubes and electrode pads full of gel that shouldn't sting, but does. i spent fourteen hours climbing the walls of my subconscious while gloved hands made adjustments flanked by heavy shoulders and eyes that seemed to never shed their bitter tears.

fourteen hours, i spent with my id. it passes in jumbled snippets of emotion that are still lost in that haze.

i was a creature,
without reason,
or cause.