Photo by Robert Linder on Unsplash
His irritation hums as I push back the curtain in the emergency room
the air electric and tense.
He clutches a juicebox
(grape; he'd requested apple)
and tells us we have twenty questions
then get
the hell
out.
"How are you?"
He glares
shoves his sandwich in his mouth
along with some of his beard.
Sputtering-
"How would you feel
eating your own fucking beard?"
We listen to his heart
check his ankles
let him be.
Later
in the quiet of the afternoon
fluorescent light refracted through gauzy blue curtains-
"How are you?"
He tells me about his time on a boat
in the war.
He tells me what it is like to be
thrown
across the room, to lose
control
of your body in a seizure.
He tells me about his wife, divorced twenty years past-
he loves her still.
"Do you need anything else?"
I ask.
"I need a fucking cigarette."
he spits
but his eyes are softer.
