Yellow Purple Blue

The corridors seem longer with each foreboding march along
Men my age, mid-life, shuffle toward me dragging their drips
Or machines that feed tubes into their sides, their throats, their asses
I watch the gunk being sucked out and the penicillin pumping in.
I was here many times as a kid
We ran riot with our legs cast, stitches busting, nightgowns flapping
The nurses would chase us
There was laughter
And a laissez-faire attitude to our care back then
Not now
Not here in this ward
I scrub my hands
They are as sterile as is possible
If I could I’d strip naked and scrub myself with bleach if it helped
But there is no helping now either
The buzzer sounds and the nurse opens the door
Into the realm of the dying
She is the ferryman guiding me across the river Styx

This is not the place she should be spending her last days
Hours
Minutes?
She is yellow and she is purple and she is blue
And it hurts to even look at her
(More than it ever has)
But it’s ok
I trick myself into thinking that colourful describes her best and that eventually
We all turn into who we have spent our lives being
And so I take her hand like it’s a butterfly wing
Like she is turning to dust
And I tell her what she already knows

The corridors, longer still on the way out, are so bare
Footsteps sound like castanets accompanied by the broken marimba
Of the clank of crutches and gurney’s clattering
But there’s no nurse chasing me
I haven’t heard laughter in weeks
Just a laissez-faire attitude to our care remains