sickbed

 

sickbed 

our bed 

shrinks from the soot

and hapless odors

holds us close

                            Elizabeth Bishop

                            Varick Street

this absence is anticipated 

the way waiting out her dying 

seems the least discrete: pee

breaks, creaking number three

stairs and in between frictions

of released (even after being

so sneaky) cedar floor suites

(the one that seems

to be breathed like a swisher

sweet) on our way to relieve

ourselves which really means

making room for more ease

sudden gone the bedpan takes on

because why not we're going so

don't waste a trip the whisper

squirt of disinfectant the one healthy

breath the one noise that will

come back afterwards the gesture

of holding one's own over 

the mostly wiped away sick

how some smells immobilize

and then go on into the future

the way sounds do when you're through

i want to go with you but first i want to

press my full weight on every board

and stair rub i want to flush the toilet

every time and not to have to 

wait not to have to tiptoe back

to your bed where you're sleeping

the last of your morphine off 

the twitch in your cheeks come to

mean like some eyelid on a coma-

tose invalid how some noise has

got through it's like a breakthrough

like wading to the water spewed

with ivy spewed with alder spewed

with a whole clean-up crew i want

to get to you then by instinct 

like bats do switching frequency easy

drawing the sheets back after

they arrive and take you and make you

clean again while I sit and try 

to doze and soak (or want to but don't)

in the room that almost instantly

starts reclaiming for itself some of

what it was before any of us came

rearranged made a life then vacated

like weight either lost gradually or 

stropped down eventually longing

to the flip of the switch