They say home is the place you never escape
even in nightmare
Here in the hospital
on her dark island
with no other family to tend
her life at long last stopped misleading her
The sound rose and fell in waves
time flapped about, wings broken
by morning that sound never happened
He spoke then
in beta-waves and millimeters of mercury
lobes and ventricles and hematomas
meaningless, trivial, stupid, lifestealing words
like the hard plastic eyes of girlhood dolls
the words had to mean something
Three words would save her.
But all her muscles couldn't force one sound.
At any moment her hands would break free and fly away
spatter-spots on the glass below
in some weirdly-cut, handheld-camera
reality show.
The mind can make a hell of heaven, or so they say.
She looks back, sees the nowhere she's been.
She would savor every baby step back, though
down into enslavement in that crumbling house
anything to convince them she was still worthy of love.