Supining
Whether in coats, gowns or jeans, the pace of movement identifies. The waltzing ones are cloaked in white. The bedridden shift in shapes, weight carried at the joints, dancing a diagnosis. Uneasy company is often quite bouncy. Badges, wristbands and tags are formalities. Each moves with choreography, unknowingly prepared for unpreparedness.
Can the protagonists ever stroll in this place? Something forbids to think of it amongst the beep, click, and paper. Heavy hearts or fumbled innards will occasionally shuffle with their poles, and if well enough, prop themselves up in chairs. Though the script usually reads “lay.”
Some ad lib a stand, despite the irony: once at eye-level, they can breathe the assumption that floats over the tiles and around the corridor, which tells them they can afford to leave and soon must do so. One whispered a smile to me, conceding he was frail in some ways and mended in others. I asked him how he was feeling, and he told me where he was going.
Others are quite crepuscular; if they perched themselves on the horizon, would they be dawn or dusk? A bed can seem like that sometimes, a place to linger between the floor and one’s feet. In the corner room, a writhing man would voice his daily request to stand, but he never could, even if he tried, though I never saw him make an attempt.
Every morning, two ladies were visited, one young and one old, who laid side by side, the curtain retracted. A stream of us records their tales of recent journeys around the wing. When I read such chronicles, they can almost seem like myths, as I always seem to find them where I left them, flat.
In an empty room I climbed onto the bunk and I too sunk into a flatness. As if a prism was slowly rotating, the colors of my malaise presented to me as I drifted thoughtless. For a moment, to sit up, just as quickly as I sat down, seemed unfathomable. I could not stand, and desperately wished this bed would glide me out of decline and reveal to me what I might be in need of.
There was a stir in the room and I leaped from the abyss red-handed. The sheets were dirtied by my shoes. I peeled them away in anticipation of our next guest.
