AS PUBLISHED IN HANDMADE FIRE
After-school care turned 24-hour close watch
when ER doctors prescribed a housebound state:
the march of red measle ants thru checked corridors
made hospital reprieves deadly for shrivelled lungs,
pneumonia turning bronchioles into tiny fists.
My sleep surpassed counting sheep to 5 day affairs
consciousness a parade of banana syrup,
toast soldiers, my mom's open palm pounding my back
to spasms as I monkey-hung off of her knee
my head two fingers from a mixing bowl turned bucket.
My mum became warden;
I became ungrateful.
My house became the pillow
that suffocated me in the night.
It isn't ‘til now, years passed like tabloid papers,
that I remember her sat days at my bed:
my pre-pubescent frame relearning how to breathe
while she willed me back to life through sleep hungry nights,
her hand a light touch on my back, a salvation.
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