OPEN YOUYR EYES, COLEEN. COLEEN, OPEN YOUR EYES.
It's a precariously thin curtain. Clouds of white lace at the top that rain down stripes of warm opaque hues. The entire apparatus looks like they belong in your grandparent's bathroom, circa 1973.
Every once in a while an anguished cry floats across the barrier. A cry that could belong to a mother.
There's a doctor's voice that says something about a rupture in the brain. Family members saunter out and are replaced by nurses. The curtains are drawn taut, fully enclosing (what is technically called a pod) in nothing but visual privacy.
Then the sounds of lazy fluids meeting greedy suction. It sounds like that staple experience at dentist, yet it somehow travels right through your ears, taking the express downtown line to the base of your tailbone. It's the last stop, so the sensation has no choice but to linger with you a while.
After a bit the curtains reopen and professionals swap out. A nurse says something about "Social Services to Bed A10". She admonishes the few nearby distraught to accompany her to the family room to discuss making decisions about a suddenly ominous "the future". They all walk down the hall together.
A different nurse appears from behind the curtain. They've got her all cleaned up, she remarks.
Time slides by quickly here. A bit too much for comfort.
Nurses and orderlies are nonchalant angels. Somehow more than human and far away in their uncanny ability to remain calm and dispense limitless empathy on demand.
The moment has come for me to leave with and drive home the patient I came to visit. I never get to see Coleen, despite how my close proximity is mixed with a truly morbid and selfish sense of curiosity. She'll remain a curtain away.
Something is said about giving Tylenol 'to the dying family member'.
-Cril
Donated her eyes
When she was young and shy
Hated awkward breasts
And felt the yawning skylines
With care set sweet
To hear existence beat
To hold the tangible
And drifting ever so gently
Second summer sky
Donated her eyes
Donated her eyes
To feel her actual senses
So sweet sixteen
To feel what life was like
Donated her eyes
To feel life as she imagined it
Go back to sleep
You yellow-bellied freaks
Afraid of God and modern science
Go back to sleep
If I could only sleep
If I could stop imagining
If my dreams weren't after me
You curse and swear
Blanket the deafening hum
Of some great silence
The jingle jangle and the heat
The strangle and sheets
Terrible and fucking meaningless
Wintersleep - Miasmal Smoke & Yellow Bellied Freaks
