Artwork, Poetry

When The Body Breaks

Heart drop

Plummet fear through claustrophobic 

Hospital walls closing in 

Time has hands that travels in circles 

I question my humanity as I wait 

Senseless hands click hours and minutes

Droning, 

My humanity answers in relentless throbs 

The back of my neck curls into a fist and shakes its disgust at the world 

When the body breaks 

We wait for answers to the tune of of trepidation 

Drip dripping from an IV

My eyes leaking my humanity –

 A gift ? It scorns me

In these white hospital walls 

Blending 

A debacle of invalids lined up in a row 

When the body breaks 

This humanity becomes a series of numbers on a screen

Blood is sucked into tiny little vials 

Rich red with possibility

Machines take my hands 

Cradled inside a metal cacoon whirring intelligible clicks and knocks 

I am anchored to my breath 

Exhaling through the metal cage locked right around my scrunched eyes and white face 

The machine marching band blurts a A tuba, a drill, high pitched mechanical groan

I count seconds to the erratic rhythm and imagine the most beautiful picture of my brain painted on pale medical paper 

Paintbrush delicately gliding over the occipital lobe , vision

The faces of those I love blend and blur 

The soft bristles curl around the top of the temporal lobe filling in my ability to hear, form memory and meaning, language 

the parietal lobe comes into swatched existence , connected with branched nerve endings related to concrete senses, soft touches, delicious flavours 

Splashing hue’s across the page 

My beautiful brain shimmers wet and warm 

Grinding gears slow to stop 

With one last whirring click I am birthed from within the metal beast and set free,

Returned to more tests of my humanity –

This cage! 

When the body breaks 

Fade back into the blurry pressure cooker of pain

Inter-cranial hypertension 

Feels like thousands of gallons of water crushing my skull from within 

Sucking air from my lungs and leeching energy

When the body breaks 

Sinking deeper 

Drooping darker 

I dream of shattering 

Popping 

Exploding 

Into thousands of tiny pieces 

I cling to hope 

And the belief of a body that serves its purpose 

Even when 

That body breaks 

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