How do I make them understand that it is not all about the brain
and it’s spots,
the colourful lit up spaces on MRI scans
and the gentle lulling beep of heart rate monitors.
What about
the baths in the kitchen sink, with dish soap suds. What about the lying
naked on the bathroom floor next to the toilet seat, bathmat
imprints on her hunched skeleton-back.
her body sweat mingling with black drain water.
Bruises in her skull, mimicking the sun-spots on the corner of her eyes.
Like when I was thirteen, and summer was still a flash of fresh gold, now wispy
white spots fry the blue skies.
Bed pans pile up near hospital beds, I am thankful to them,
she can no longer squat and her business runs
down her legs at home. The blood draws and the IV lines puncture metallic holes
in her paper skin.
How do I make them understand that her feet barely touch
the bleached linoleum floors and that she begs me to cut
her rock-hard nails (she thinks I am her nurse). So, I kneel
at alters of rusted tasks. She often asks ‘what is this’ and ‘what is that’
it takes me back to when I was the child asking her that.
The smell of a circle envelopes us, stinging my eyes
I ask her if she would like to see photos from when I was five.
She doesn’t hear me, she wants oranges she says.
The unpeeled fruits lie in the corner, rotting,
attracting summer fruit flies. I choose the one with the least number
of spots on its wrinkled skin,
its sweetness clings, its pungency lingers.
Who had the idea years ago, to make all that is dying smell
so sickeningly sweet.
to make all that is dying so sticky that our hands cannot let go.
half uneaten orange
In the fifth month,
When orange-trees
Fill all the world with scent,
I think of the sleeve
Of a girl who loved me.
– From the Japanese of Nari-hira “An Orange Sleeve”.
I peel the orange, it breaks into perfect halves;
the orange reminds me of my grandmother,
her wrinkled hand in my tiny ones.
She would give me half and the other was hers.
She would ‘open’ each one for me,
removing the little pips inside.
She would hand me an ‘orange flower’,
and patiently wait as I ate it,
dripping orange juice down my elbows,
grinning as I showed her my sticky fingers;
She would then wipe my mouth, with her soft sleeve
and a brush of her paper thin skin.
And now I wait, sitting between her orange trees;
a line of five orange flowers in front of me
and the other half I swallow slowly.