Primary Children’s Hospital

by

Sundy Watanabe

Email: watanabe@inconnect.com

I promise her that snow will come soon.

Already, the sky breathes clouds in choking circles

gray around the edges.

They shift uneasily between the mountain ridges

as her body shifts beneath white sheets, as her

fingers agitate upon the bedclothes

and at the edges of her hair.

 

The aspens have turned early.

“A sure sign,” I tell her.

Soon they will shelve their expectations of dance

and lean their musty arms together

to brave a wind too heavy.

When snow comes,

they will define the shape of things,

wounded bears

howling in their ragged coats,

hollowing out places on the hillside,

holding the outline white with the absence of gold.

 

Rooted to the floor, something in me

beats against the corners of the ceiling,

hovers at that distance, sees

her pupils dilate,

her fingers grip the nebulized lifeline,

her sentences cut into syllables

as she tries to talk, the

blood pounding at her temples

like the lungs in her distended chest.

 

Clouds hang ragged

and pieces of them shred in icy shafts.

All around, the weight and the wheezing silence.

©2000 Sundy Watanabe

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