Here we go again
Man, this **** really ***** ***
They say I need it

May 2013
Memorial day weekend
It was warm with promises of sun
Beautiful blue skies
And no cloud in sight
Seattle prepared for crowds
People swarming the Center
For folk music, food
Laughter and smiles shining bright

My leg, a bright red
I woke up
Burning hot with red seeping up my leg
Pain swarmed my back
Tears gathering
In corners of my eyes
As I was admitted
To the emergency room
Greeted with morphine, leaving me in a haze

*** induced haze
Lingering around the fountain
Families occupied the edge
Children running in and out
Collecting droplets of water
Along with sunburns
While groups of friends
Gathering in drum circles
Slow rhythmic thumping could be heard for miles

My son’s heartbeat
Thumped in my ears
I watched the fear
As he focused on the antibiotic drips
Invading my body
The days in clipped moments
Passing in and out
With each wave of fever
And the doctors
Tattooed my leg with sharpie

Artwork was only one thing
Found in the vendor alley
People flooded the booths
Snatching up
Brightly colored creations
As they headed to find
Dance troupes, bollywood
Inspired activities
With stomping feet, swaying arms

They placed the central line
Into my right arm
My body had clogged each IV
the doctors warned me
If the redness started
To show patterns of serrating
Then they would have to take my leg
Diazepam had me slurring out
I am fine, I am fine

Memorial Day
A time of remembrance
Services to be held
Events to commemorate
All the fallen
From a concert at Museum of Flight
To baseball game with Seattle Mariners
To appreciate, appreciate

It took ten days
For me to be released
May 2013, Memorial Day weekend
I would always remember
As the beginning
Of my growing struggle
With gradual loss of mobility

I am fine, I am fine

i never understood the phrase
home is where the heart is
until i was shaking on the floor of
my hospital room and it was nothing
but walls
and even when i found the energy to
decorate with cliché little things
like fairy lights, posters, my
skeletal “art”
i felt the room swallow me whole
until i was nothing but a grain of sand
my new roommate was a wrinkly zucchini-girl
and i tried not to speak to her
but we heard each other cry in the night
and we never said a word
but i could feel her eyes on me
a girl down the hall
heard me talking about my addiction and
she told me she would pray for me
later that day she pushed me
into a wall and pressed her
lips against mine
then told me i was tempting her,
i was a sin
just waiting to happen
so i sat in the dark outside her room every
night before i went to sleep
and sometimes she would
come out
and hold my hands
and tell me she loved me

In a ward overcrowded
Patients confounded left distressed
While overworked essentials crave rest
But the best they can do is a guess
Smiles of comfort not even seen through the screen of PPE
And machines that help them rest
As they take their last ventilated
Breath.

A big gentle man
Cracks on with his plan just
To survive as any man can
In a hotbed pandemic
Hatred endemic for his kind
Devalued in life and in death
He is stopped blind
Takes his last suffocated
Breath

A pleading young mother
Kids scream at each other
It’s all too much for dad
It’s a rage and he’s had
A few and that’s not the least
Can’t get away from the beast
She covers her bruises
Picks up her youngest
And
Hopes she can get through the worst
Hot blood on the cold knife
Sweet murdered wife takes her last
Breath

Stagnant Suffocating confinement
The unrelenting walls closing in-
Hale, exhale; Zoom yoga and baking dough
Obliged to show forget the death
For a brief moment you
Took away my
Breath.

Lying on the cold kitchen floor
Tears streaming down her face
Her cheeks are burning worse than they ever have before
A twinge of pain in a hip rendered weak
A wave of depressive agony wipes over her face again
Screaming above her head, words that make no sense
Quotations around the pain her mother uses
A cold dragging stagger walk to a hospital all by herself.