I join you in the wordless hospital room, where
tv static settles on your body, curled
under blankets, your head only
appearing above covers.
Maybe you really are asleep this time.
I’m allowed my book, resting on the table. I watch
some muted, made-for-tv remake of Cinderella.
I had to leave
my pen with the nurse, so I use a crayon, scratching
notes on one of your half-colored pictures
I can’t decipher. You should be sleeping
in your own bed,
with the family that wanted you until they didn’t.
You should be home, away from the lonely
shuffle of doctors, microwaved meals, and lights
out at nine. All done,
fallen through, who knows how?
When news broke you swung madly, broke
windows and swallowed the glass, settling
in yourself something unsettled,
leaving only this strangeness behind, silence;
your barely breathing figured heaped beneath sheets.
A week ago, readying for bed
you called to me
doing head checks on the others, unusually
bright: I’m going to be adopted.
You hadn’t put more than a few words together
for me in months, and at once,
a revelation: do you think they’ll like me?
Standing bedside to your triumph, I leaned into
my assurance: they’re lucky to have you.
You smiled,
and with a hand rubbed down from the crook
of your elbow each scar along your arm.
I think I’ve come to it, wondering a while after you
there, like a kind of nothing,
how you took into yourself the pressure, sand
and sheen, the sheet unbearable,
light splintering in refracted fragments, cutting
a shaft of clarity
nearly fatal, but something resembling sense,
your answering maybe for good the question
in your blood; having found at last
a place, belonging
to the elements, this reduction of form
an idea of purity: easing
at last into blankness,
pure reflection.