Nurse
at Health Sciences North
You find humility if you don’t already have it.
Life makes sure of that.
And we shared a love of animals.
She wore black cats on her scrubs
and had a dragonfly tattooed on her ankle.
I was withdrawn and broken, but she seemed to understand.
Rousing me to shower a few times a week.
Knocking on the yellow privacy curtain as if
it were a door, I always appreciated that.
Some small mercy.
How she was older and how the younger nurses
seemed to hold that against her.
The cutter in the next room not allowed
a razor to shave.
And how everyone was locked in their room
whenever fights broke out on the unit.
She never once asked me if I wished to harm myself.
She could see it in my eyes.
I always appreciated that.
That she didn’t ask.
How she saw another human being
and never just the illness.
***
Paradise Bird
up high
in straggly
blue armpits
stretched out
like false
confessions
in traction
your talons
angry barbers
behind the chair
a simple black
feather
between my fingers
swift plumage
dance
you must be lost,
paradise bird
flightpaths are
human
and full of
luggage
paradise bird
around my neck
so the law
can build their
gallows
nest here
long enough in
the heart
that the worst
of Man
can take flight
again.
***
Scissors Don’t Cut Themselves
I hear what you
are saying about self-inflicted wounds,
but scissors don’t
cut themselves.
They sit in
drawers dreaming of construction paper floozies.
Of being placed
over the hand like eager swordfish gloves.
Gnawing into a
fresh roll of masking tape like sitting down to dinner.
You will not find
scissors on the psych ward. You will
find cutters,
but they are not
scissors. They are a sad scarred flesh
that wants
the feelies of the
once small child back. Scissors had no childhood.
No one ever pushed
a pair of scissors on the swings in the park
and watched it
pump it’s legs with simple joy. So when
you speak
of self-inflicted
wounds, please leave my scissors out of it.
They enjoy their
privacy and some of yours as well.
***
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press, Red Fez, Under The Bleachers, and The Oklahoma Review. His personal website is: http://ryanquinnflanagan.yolasite.com/
WOW! Your writing always tells a story, I really like that! Congrats!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Lynn!
ReplyDelete