NIGHT IN THE HOSPITAL

Here there will be no brandy
lighting your body like
a secret cave. Your only escape
will be by window where night,
cut in squares by
a child's blunt scissors
spies on you like a portrait
of the great grandfather
who has been
staring you down for decades
with his greedy eyes.

Though you've only been here
a few days, you're beginning
to forget the way the trees
chant to each other in wind,
and the vibrant blues and oranges
of the quilt you put between
yourself and night.
At first you try to pretend
you stumbled onto this
snowy landscape by accident;
it has nothing to do with you.

But a Portuguese woman is dying
in the bed beside you.
When she forgets the language she's
used for forty years
and breaks through in her primal tongue,
everything comes closer--
the fans whirring on the roof
like your own heart,
the night that can't be locked out
roaring in your blood.

first appeared in Cimarron Review