You responded. Social networking sites have made us all think in terms of status updates. 2009 has ruined my writing and made any new poetry trite and forgettable. You think that’s perfect, but it makes sense. I added that to another list I’m not allowed to make.
Then I consider what’s relevant: current questions of great intrigue. Summer and sex are on everyone’s mind, and these questions have afforded me a certain amount of ridicule. To one close friend, my responses are pathetic. Another half-heartedly attempts to assuage my concern. Nobody cares about themselves more than themselves. I am smitten with me. I am the cutest couple.
And I depended on these same sights to see what mattered, to see where everyone was, at one moment. I found myself like the depicted insane in overacted old movies: pulling at hospital gowns, but only because I needed to see my shoulders, screaming slurs at no one, but blurry nurses and the potential for relief: the morphine drip. I didn’t want to seem a seeker, a term Jane had used in our last session. That was about the dentist and it seemed legitimate.
This was too played out, but I was 30 hours in without food or water and could only roll my eyes when she said “resident.” Then my nurse went on lunch and no one could find her or cared to come back to tell me. At some point, Jody was on the phone and I struggled to find the name of the hospital. I was anywhere.
There was an oblong rock rolling over in my stomach. I tried to sleep sitting up. I tried to drink water. I tried to look around, but everyone had work to do, work to go to, work to stay at and I had to keep my hand over my headache. I was anywhere, and I was the only one there, and barely so.
