ICU

Night and blinding rain could not hold me back.

Though all the mudlets of hell danced
on the lying skin of a hundred potholes,
and wipers whapped
make-it-he-won’t,
make-it-he-won’t,
I am here, my darling.
And I will hold your hand
until the light of dawn
or death.

In this low-lit cloistered space
of beeping monitors and screens,
neon numbers and pulsing waves of light create
their own Aurora Australis,
and everything you thought you knew
you do not, and every second that passes
becomes more fragile than the last.

All night I watch your chest rise and fall
on bellows of pumped oxygen,
staff tip-toe in to adjust a canula,
check the seal of your mask.

Behind a glint of spectacles,
specialists confer at the foot of your bed,
tucking pens into white coats
in a whispered exchange of possibilities.

Arterial lines of hope
hang in the air.

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