To the Wheelchair Girl

Who Read Poems
By the Wire Window
In the Crazy Hospital


Cam-ell, you said. Can I have
a Cam-ell. You smiled at
such uncertain suicides. You
must be mended now,
enough for ruffled cuffs,
or habit. Or did one
of your inescapable arguments
finally prove to be conclusive?

You read Dickenson
through the flydrone days,
the same few, head tilted
as far to the light
as the neck brace let it,
absorbed, ticking like a frozen fence.
You were “ready.” Opinion from on high
was that you’d find a way to fly, or fall.
You were imminent, Electric, snowy distances.
A medical embarrassment.

Sometimes your sisters
from the convent came, left gifts:
missals you launched at the walls;
your confiscated rosaries
sanctified the nurses’ station.
Green came sun through wired glass.
Your mere turning of a page
was a thing to be watched. A yawn.
Cam-ell, you said. Did you make it?