can I tell you that I hate the smell?
of saline solution, please, I only ask
because I’m not too sure you can hear
me over your own noises. I understand
it must be uncomfortable with the wet
muscles of your throat constricting
over a piece of hard rounded plastic and
a stiff body from a distressing hospital bed
but what I am dealing with is much worse.
the smell I’m telling you is more
horrible than that—that bag you have
hanging above your head, sitting pretty
as the morning light shines through
making it seem like a crystal of life
replacing the blood pUmPiNg, racing,
s t o p p i n g—-through your heart and
turning you cold, a forced shiver pricking
on your rising flesh that even rattles
down to the bone the kind you’d only have
from an October day in November. saline,
plain, yet sharp & burning, a bad alcohol in
my nose I never get used to smell every time
I gave you my blood and coupled with a
machine that tracks an anxious heart
I must feel sorry for myself because
the heartbeats have never sounded so
much like an unwilling harmony between
soft chested birds—beep chirp beep chirp
beeeeeeeee chirp chirp—I’m sorry I
know you’re going to ask why, why
I am doing something like this in the
daylight of your fractured mind but
can I tell you, please, that I hate?
the smell of saline because I’m afraid
no one else will listen to me. even now
you’re closing your eyes on me, don’t
be tired I am almost finished with one
thing left—chirp chirp chirp—don’t you
think it’s silly to fear things like dying?
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