augustunicorn 
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Posts: 10
(2/16/04 4:45)
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Hospital Stay
Hospital Stay
I’ve never been in the hospital
for more than a few hours,
except for that hospital stay
back in the eighties, for which
a kidney infection had brought
me there and for which his love
had brought me back to health.
He stayed all through the night
and was there in the morning
when I awoke to see his face
smiling at me and hear his voice,
a soft whisper, saying how he
enjoyed watching me as I slept,
for it reminded him of why he cared.
But lately I’ve been having dreams
of a hospital stay where patients
lie sick and dying from diseases,
such as aids, or from an accident
that left them a mangled corpse,
wondering what it would be like now
that he isn’t here to look after me.
These images float over me as if
they are drifting down a river on
their way to some god-forsaken
place where death waits with its
arms outstretched to embrace them,
like the open mouth of a furnace
waiting to engulf the darkness in flames.
What does it mean then, this death?
Beckoning me down a dark corridor
to my own demise, like some lover
standing there in all his glory, ready
to penetrate me and fill me with the
seeds of self-pity, a pool of remorse
in which I shall be forced to wallow.
What if I’m forced to spend my life
alone inside myself, riding along in
the back of some open vehicle with
my arms flailing in the wind, my head
bobbing up and down like a cast-off
doll that no longer has anyone to care
for it, has no one to kiss it goodnight?
Will I ever awake from such dreams,
find the answers that I search for or
will I be forced to stare at the inside
of the box that will line my gravesite,
wondering why the happiness which
was present in my youth has been
all too unresponsive of late? Tell me
Is this my lover then, this death?
© William August Kobs
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