Benediction

 
I’m sitting in the dark,
as first rays coerce light
through the small gap between
blind and window—it is
the gloaming’s unnamed
identical twin. But why
nameless, surely it’s
deserving? Don’t all Castors
need a Pollux, Romulus
a Remus, Mary-Kate
an Ashley? Neither night
nor morning, perhaps
the unwrapping or
reopening, although
both lack élan. My back
braced against two bed pillows,
dark roast lapping the rim
of the Spanish azul-glazed
mug in my right hand.
Coffee, slow and bitter
as that night eight years ago
when you said We need a break,
but here you are, still, asleep
alongside me, inhaling
and exhaling like a mockingbird
calling at 2AM, a complete
night’s sleep a rare treat
in your seventh decade,
and this harmonic traces a smile
over my top and bottom lips,
while time mimes the decades
we’ve lain alongside each other,
the way banks hug a stream,
twisting and turning, yet forever
entwined, and how lovely it is
just to sit—my left leg grazing
your right, sheets still slightly
piney from the wash, drinking
French Roast, in the everyday
air of an unwrapping morning.

*

MRI

 
Modern medicine says hello, not with a smile or twinkling eyes, but with a bang loud enough to wrench my head ninety degrees to the left, as if Rowdy Roddy Piper had me in a headlock, while the referee slaps the mat, the count now at eight. But no, my head is hugged by two expensive plastic braces—penny-level expensive compared to this bedroom-sized multi-million dollar machine, that is making every kind of bang, clang, and soft-tissue image possible. Then there’s the high pitched shriek that I myself would issue, if any utterance was permitted, however, my imperative is to remain motionless as a bullfrog within reach of a hungry great blue heron, and so I just repeat my mantra and loosely clutch the blue squeezy that activates the escape protocol. Wedding ring and Maori jade amulet removed and I’d better ask about the titanium staples that have merged the sections of my lower colon for the last 35 years, because metal is metal, regardless of where it sleeps, and this machine hugs tight to metal as if it were the only lover in the Imaging Center. Loose, comfortable clothing they say, so it’s tee and running shorts—medicine is always cold in both affect and effect, so it’s a long-sleeved tee rather than a shorty. Surprisingly, the tech says after a while your back may grow hot because my back is what I’m here for, well, spine specifically. And I won’t bore your with terms like L4 subluxation and collapsing spinal canal, because I can still walk, even while my nerves fire hot shots through weakened legs to my toes, and it may be that pins and needle soles will be my new story for decade eight, even though a scalpel waits to write the opening paragraph.

*

(Featured image from Pexels)