Three visitors like camels came in turn to my room: my Doctor, Mother and a Nun
The opening of a strange joke,
Each in that memory

Posed as different Elgin marbles,
Silhouettes on the half-formed Acropolis of that night, the first time I almost died.
Ha! This is not a story of how Death came and taught me how to flourish in Spring
The Spirit of god is in my nostrils

It taught Winter, hiding, fear,
My lips shall not speak wickedness,
A failure to push above the frozen tundra and remain instead hard beneath the soil.

The Doctor appeared first, with his Iranian olive eyes, leading the caravan of my fate.
Later I learned he was a musician,
A concert pianist,
Trained in my metronomic beats

Tick Tock. Lay still, or the blood-clots might move and there’s nothing we can do.

If you make it through the night. Tick Tock. And see the morning, you will be fine.
My heart shall not reproach me.

Twelve Hours. Tick Tock.
You are all miserable comforters!

You should be fine. Would you like me to call your parents? No. One is coming.

He took off, but his patchouli aftershave lingered, like a cloud burst in an old movie
At the end of a dramatic monologue,
Vanishing. Poof!
The messenger had exited stage left

Making room for my mother to arrive, watery eyed. Brave, even though the isolation
Of suburbia convinced her she was feeble. In truth a hearty Redwood, up and down

Loving actress. Kind.

I was too young to know my trees and had misjudged the strength of her branches.

She brought comfort food, treats I didn’t trade them for the news of my timeline.
I believe her face invited the lie:
“Oh I have just eaten”.
Carrot cake and prawn sandwiches.
“I’ll eat them later, when I have an appetite for more”. I saw the water jug tremble.

The familiar rounds of her knuckles pressed to my hand, marble cold, full of her care
Where were you when I laid the earth?
I wanted her to believe
A man will give all he has for his own life
I couldn’t let her know that I wanted the easy escape, to step quietly off the soft edge

Of the Acropolis and lift upwards, an effortless Icarus untethered from that cold quarry
Of stones I dragged through a labyrinth
In silence. I never called
For her, expecting her, despising her,

Assuming she would have noted the nothing, alerted by the silence I had served her.
Visiting hours just ended, and I turned my head away to pretend that I was sleeping.

And pretended, since all Mothers know that false tilt, their child’s head not yet asleep.

Around ten the Nun entered, resident nurse of the hospital, strangely also a convent.
Her badge said Sister Samantha,
An Irish football fan,

Who had a clipboard for her notes.
She asked in her Dublin voice “Tell me my child, what drugs have you ever taken?”

I relayed, modestly, my short university list, small at least compared to the others
To be Inscribed with an iron tool
A little bit of weed.
Oh, that my words were recorded

Meagre compared to those who took pills and swung from lamp-posts before lunch.

I didn’t say that. Putting down her pen she sighed. ‘Your Mammy will be so ashamed.’

“I know Sister Samantha, I know.”
Not the time.
Her cold piety lay as a damp towel,

I forced a yawn and also her departure, hoping her absence might bring a brief peace.

When she had gone I let my eyes adjust to the low light, looking up at dull ceiling tiles.
Shady trees covered that man with shadow

Dreary grey

Willows of the brook folding around him
Why, when there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’ll die
At last lying on your back, must our final view be of such off-white vaults of heaven?

At midnight the lights went out. I tidied my bed sheets, and I finger-combed my hair,

Still capable of such quiet vanity.

Then a voice:
“Don’t be afraid the Lord is with you.”
Maybe it was Sister Samantha, I can’t say for certain, who had come back in to check.

I try not to think of the dim corners in that peaceful room, beneath the ugly ceiling.

When the morning stars sang together
Spring arrived.
A land where the light is as darkness
I survived the night. It would take years to thaw, to be ready for the next time I nearly died.