Breakfast in Scarborough

Friendship knits us close,

but bedside attentions hasten me closer,

find me fishing for fabric

below the blades of your shoulders

to snap the gown together back to front,

then fasten bracelets to rock-n-roll wrists

and fold a blanket over your feet.

***

Fully tucked from chest to toes,

you hold up hands as teachers

who tell a story of siege:

fingertips furrowed by siphoned fluids,

nails shrunken by a fungus that profits

from sapped immune system,

vasculitis scattering its scarlet marks,

and the sober port implanted in your left arm.

***

When the dinner tray arrives, you check it out,

delighting in rosy chunks of melon,

calling them sexy and inviting me to share.

This prompts glad rummage in a dresser on wheels

for a fork nestled in cache of butter pots

and sweetener sachets, pink and white.

***

As I boost mattress-firmness from 5 to 7,

you describe the Olympian efforts needed

to centre your body in bed,  

the triumph of standing for 15 seconds,

pain searing hips and legs, shooting like lightning,

your broken back screaming No.

***

Though suffering torments untold,

you nevertheless look outwards,

still notice a new haircut,

praise my purple glasses, and accuse me of flirting

with the Robo Coffee Bot in the lobby.

I love you for not giving End-stage Liver Disease

the right to devour your delicious banter

or eclipse the firestorm of your charm.

This to me is valour, this to me is grace.

***

Yes is the answer to your request

to read the poem where your father

lifts you into the pony’s saddle at the local fair.

At the sound of this verse, confinement

and paralysis dissolve, inciting tears to fall

as you say, I can feel my father here. He’s here.

***

Held by this truth, grief and love saturate me

throat to chest, sensing how family and time return

to encircle you with solace from age six to sixty,

never divided, never abandoned, never lost.

Memories of my own father’s smile melt composure,

and I dash to the pantry to fill paper cups with half ice,

half water, hoping the coolness will last after I leave.

***

On my return to Bed 2, you ask if I smell bowel movement

and buzz the front desk to state, I need a change.

At the sight of nurses with fresh bed pads,

I step into the hall while they clean your ass, crotch, and thighs,

careful of rashes, mindful of pain.

***

I sit with you a little longer,

and soon dark brown eyes begin to close

and re-open at shorter and shorter intervals,

sleep stealing the ends of sentences.

Unsettled at first, I come to respect

the eloquence of drowsiness

that tells me time to go and let you rest.

***

Another visit is planned,

but I never see you again

nor hear you harmonize

with Free Falling on the radio,

lyrical instincts unbroken,

deep voice dancing into curtained corners,

soulcraft that shatters

silent windows with its flight.

Right cheek warmed by friendly planks,

I sprawl beneath a chosen window

that spills its sunshine on my lips,

ladles honey heat over tilted nape.

I roll from side to side, waking combs of beeswax

and provoke the floor to creak an invitation:

“You can ask me anything.”

***

Unsure, I glance to the mirror for answers,

but it speaks only shame, does not listen.

I fling away my glasses, and the judge dissolves to Wisdom:

examining my body is only one way to experience it.

***

Rising yesward on bolder knees,

I study the high ceiling,

ten tall windows with fans whirring on their sills,

the fire exit platform threaded with vines –

and this choir of generous portals shouts

“Get Your Freedom Here!”

and bids me stand.

***

Now on my feet, I allow shoulders and wrists and thighs

to shake off dutiful belittlements —

the should’s, the sorry’s, the shrinking silences —

and let them be shed and shredded on the dance floor

somewhere south of broken.

***

For once, my hips don’t apologize for their curves

and they dare me leap from mountain bridge

to thunder-soaked river, where I wrestle

with dangerous currents I’ve shunned out of fear.

Surrender to the river tugs me wild open, cracking my thick shell,

pushing, pulling, having me rolling like a beast

who slaps mud on her chest and stamps her hooves

and doesn’t care who thinks she needs a cage.

***

Being here in this dancing river

feels like returning to the fire-girl I was,

burning up caution, sadness, and grief in a healing fever,

reveling in electrical storms that crackle along my bones,

flourishing a purple cape, tasting the salt of delectable effort,

spine loose, palms grateful, instinct hushing intellect,

feet singing over noise of the brain.

Here in this movement, I inhabit my body, my rightful home.

I am a ruined barn, empty but smelling of ancient hay. I sit in a lost valley, no longer a shelter nor part of a living farm. I used to be warmer, to glow orange from lanterns on February mornings, to retain animal heat. Now my shadows fill in their outlines, brief flashes from the highway my only relief.

I am tired of being a relic, a rural ghost who attracts photographers from the city. Their insulting attention reminds me that I am just a skeleton of economies past, a symbol of romantic decay.

All my sounds are whispers and echoes now, where once I heard grunts, shouts, whinnies, cries of pain and hunger. It’s so quiet now. Ruin is quiet. My unsteady walls feel dry, brittle, so straw-like that one warm hand on my door would set me ablaze. I welcome this fire, this sweet extinction into ashes.

When it rains, I feel the blessed water soaking my beams, splashing through broken panes, swelling the hayloft floor so that I forget my ladder is broken and my stalls now shells that once held a family’s wealth and sustenance. I miss being whole. I miss being real. I miss the animals I used to protect.