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SM Dec 2017
From the outside, the overwhelming brick structure appears as a haven to heal for the sick, but from within, it serves as a prison, where the sickness terrorizes the inmates doomed here. A bright red cross glows above in the moonlight, appearing as a beacon of hope, despite all those within the structure feeling hopeless. The large glass doors slide open by themselves, welcoming in all who dare to come near. Beyond the glass, white coats rush by in a blur in all different directions, hurrying to serve their independent duties of checking blood pressure, feeding patients, giving baths, monitoring heart rates, and giving medication to the helpless.
A heavy metal door swings open to reveal a labyrinth of a hundred overwhelming hallways. The white walls extend for what seems like miles. A fluorescent buzzing light runs along the ceiling to the end of the corridor. The bright hall strains the human eye as it stares into the abyss of the neverending white hallway, illuminated by the blinding lights. The only color emerges at the very end of the passage, where a faint red exit sign glows. It appears as the only escape for those within, but only reveals a staircase to the other hundred halls beyond this one.
The sagging eyes of a receptionist light up for a moment at the sight of another living human at this early of an hour, but the excitement is not reciprocated by the other, due to the sorrow of being among these white walls again. The only other creatures she often sees here resemble zombies attached to IV bags, who slowly stumble down the hall to get a taste of the freedom beyond their prison beds. They desire health. They desire happiness. They desire escape. The shoes of the visitor clack across the cold tile, passing by identical rooms filled with dormant bodies on bed rest. Most bodies are told they must only stay a couple of days. But a couple days turn into a couple weeks. A couple weeks turn into a couple months. A couple months can turn into the end of their lives. The visitor wanders in a maze of all the bodies who appear the same, hopeless and trapped they are still.
Gray indented chairs from being sat in for too long line against the walls of this boxed in room. The lights are duller here. Waiting. The visitors can finally rest their eyes, they can finally rest their soul. Magazines fall off the wall, unread and unkept for months. The chips stacked in the vending machine taste stale, but still the most delicious dinner available to the visitors who have made these indented chairs their home away from home.
The only sound escaping into the hall from the patients rooms are quiet sobs and beeping heart monitors. Among the rooms, the visitors kneel alongside the bed with a rosary in hand. A prayer escapes the lips of the grieving as death dances over the bodies of their loved ones. The bodies are still alive, but the bodies are not living. The rooms are stenched with sorrow, sickness, and sterile. White sheets, white walls, white light. The white fills the rooms, but darkness still looms. Each room reeks of bleach that cleanses the metal instruments and IV stands, while it destroys any sense of humanity for the bodies trapped within. The blinds on the window are shut, keeping out all of the outside world, besides a single beam of moonlight that shines in the only hope left in the darkness of this dull night for the bodies of the alive, but not living.
I know these are supposed to be poems but it's fine, don't worry about it. I had to describe a setting that makes me frightened or uneasy for my English class. I decided to describe a hospital at 2 in the morning because thats kinda spooky. Hospitals are where many lives are brought into this world and many are lost. People are crying in the halls, saying prayers, and finding out terrible news so often and their was something unsettling about a hospital to me at 2am when I was a young child, so I decided to base the essay off that. Read it if you'd like. Thanks!
Trinity Carlyle Nov 2017
Bright kid
Straight A's
Always quiet as a mouse

But nowadays it seems she can barely even leave her house

Can't breathe
Can't speak
Can't even walk down the street without help

The doctors don't know what her body is doing to itself

"Go there
Take that
Pull her from this, this, and that"

Late nights
No sleep
Is barely able to eat

There's something wrong
They know it's true
"The symptoms just aren't there," they say, "Where's the proof?"

Work piling up
Quizzes missed
How is she expected to finish all of this?

"Coughing?
Wheezing?"

"All of the above
Not to mention a killer headache
and a bit of a stomach bug"

"There's no temperature yet,
So all we can do
Is give her some Tylenol with Codeine
And see if it's just the flu"

Bright kid
Hardly an A in sight
Always quiet as a mouse
Except for at night
This is about the struggle I'm currently having with my asthma, I suppose.
Rebecca Sorenson Nov 2017
All my life
I lived in fear
And cowered away
From the light

But the light
It wasn't the refreshing light
Or the light you're happy to see
After being in the dark so long

This light was different
It was the light from people
The people who judged you
If you lived in darkness

Because darkness
It's associated with death
And despair
And sadness

And sadness is associated with weakness
And if you're weak
Then you're not worthy of living

And so you shy away from that light
That ****** light
Afraid of being discovered
Living in the comforting darkness

And once you're discovered
You get sent away
To a place full of bright lights
And supposedly soothing voices

They hand you medicine
But to me
It's like they're shoving it down my throat

And every night
When I take that pill
It's like I'm swallowing my life
Drowning it

Because the medicine doesn't help
It makes me irritable
And angry
And serious
Because I can never see
With that horrid light shining in my eyes

They took me out of the darkness
Because they thought I wasn't happy
But then they trapped me in the cursed light
Where I am now petrified
ljl sunshine Nov 2017
She got it.

She greeted us
shook our hands

She understood why we came
She made eye contact
with both of us

She saw the look we gave each other

She explained the plan clearly
She put in the labs
and the appropriate referrals

She listened

Most of all
she did not smile too much
GNPetch Oct 2017
I close my eyes and find myself somewhere far away
I’m in a place I call
my land of make believe
No longer am I chained to bed
No more wires
No more needles
No more endless monotone beeping
beep...beep...beep
No more Doctors
No more Nurses
No more
“How’s the pain?”
“Your color is looking better”
“I know it hurts ***, but please…
Just try sleeping.”
In my land of make believe I am not sick
I am not on the brink of death
I’m not just another statistic on some random doctor's clipboard
I am me
The me before this disease
I am the me that only exists in my mind now
This me lives only in the crevices of my slowly decaying brain
The only thing that breaths this me to life
Is my imagination
For once I open my eyes
The only me I have
Is the one that lays weak
In this hospital bed
And even this me may not last much longer
Mims Oct 2017
So I thought I was depressed again.
Which is like,
Totally confusing because I was depressed last week and I shouldn't be due for another 'episode' for at least three days

Turns out I'm not depressed
Just severely ill
But its funny how I mix up all the symptoms now
Like being tired all the time
Or the headaches
Or the lack of appetite

So this was really confusing to me,
Cause I'm a girl who likes to eat,
When I'm healthy,

And mom kept asking me if I was okay,
Over and over
And I kept saying yes, I'm fine..
Just the usual.
Mom says I'm a little more pale then usual
A little more tired looking
And I say "wow thanks mom, like I totally care about appearances right now" and I laugh

And she doesn't

I only realized I was sick when a doctor told me I was,
Which is completely different from being depressed because the same doctor tried to tell me I wasn't

Sooooo confusing

So I'm actually sick physically for once?
Not just mentally.
Ha,
Isn't that funny.
Got a nasty cold last week
saranade Sep 2017
It was always a joke, phrase or idiom
It wasn't an analysis of what we did to them
The paralysis which was led by God or men
Who left a woman with a life condemned
And "he" is not found, but here I am.

I lost my arm to a waterfall
Fostered harm by something beautiful
A hand and forearm unmade musical
Water on land intersects not once, several
A band of storms lay down by that Neanderthal.

Waters splash like cymbals crash
Like whiplash from 3 cars smashed
Like fast paced life becoming past
Like a harassed female, never asked
And at long last... I'm unembarrassed.

Soft as water came, it became a hurricane
Pain blows through my veins and brain
I sound insane as I strain to explain
Doctors abstain and became inhumane
Riding the insane a-train to remain...
...a soft stream of water.
Finding my own beauty reminds me of the storms on tv. They hurt people, and are yet, so majestic, beautiful.
Clare Margaret Jul 2017
I am in fourth grade--ten years old,
first period, first kiss, first full shave
from armpit to ankle.

The teacher pulls me aside--all smiles
and maternal excitement.
She tells me that my test scores put me
in the 98th percentile.

I **** my head, recalling the soft-lead, the
guarded pencil sharpener at the front of the room,
and the bullseye ovals that tested my mind,
my palm sweat, my straining eyes.

I am in fourth grade--ten years old,
first violent fight with my mother, first homosexual
fantasy, first dressing room meltdown.

The pediatrician pulls me aside--half austerity, half pity.
He tells me that I need three HPV shots, and by the way,
my weight puts me
in the 98th percentile.

My eyes sink back into my face, and the flood doesn’t come
until I am home, curled into my mother’s breast,
wondering how to divide my head into
Focused Student and Focused Starver.

I am in fourth grade--ten years old,
times tables and long division and calories
in an apple and calories burned in a playground brawl.

I learn to count my success in numbers and my failures
in grams, pounds, inches, threats
of fat camp, images of thick yellow fat
sandwiched between my organs.

I am in fourth grade--ten years old,
98th percentile and chewing and spitting and growing
and pinching the body that I cannot call my own--
and numbing the brain that matches the magnitude of my fullness.

I am a split-girl, a shame reservoir spilling
over and out and coating my paper with fractions and plans
of calculated disappearance.

I am in fourth grade--ten years old,
and the teacher’s clock doesn’t stop, and the and the doctor’s scale doesn’t pause
to make room for my magnitude.
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