In the MRI
The room is cool, empty but for the machine; the lights dimmed to offer a small semblance of comfort. You lie on your back in shabby hospital gown, a failed monk who has not yet finished stitching his robes. From somewhere you hear the sound of a bell, small yet piercing. It calls the silence closer, sends the low hum of machinery back below the surface. A calm, disembodied voice reminds you not to move. You will be instructed when to breathe, it says, and when not to. In that moment, you remember learning to float as a small child, trusting the strength and cradle of the water. Trusting the world to hold. Whatever happens after this is simply what happens. You breathe in, hold it there at the center. You do so as many times as instructed. Wait patiently to hear the bell once more. Before you know it, you’ll be home.
• • •
These Rooms
Take one last look at these simple
rooms before they crumble
into memory – becoming, as they must,
the unremarkable scenery of a passing show
spoken of to some future lover
or acquaintance; one who will not know
our family’s touch or hush of sleep,
our history or language untranslatable,
the familial smells that were ours alone.
Rooms that still hold our voices like smoke
clinging to walls and fabric,
handprints like the ghost of birds
trapped in dusty window glass,
rooms the baby first opened her eyes to,
drinking in the first blue light of day,
which lingers a moment but never stands still.
Maybe one look is all we are given
In the end, the first and the last merely
reflections mistaken for opposites,
signposts constructed so as not to lose
our way along this path, leading
to whatever home will have us now.
• • •
When All This Is Over
When all this is over, we’ll know for certain that we lived through something together. Albeit mostly apart. We’ll remember the days without name, the nights of quiet laughter and restlessness; the occasional swings in mood and equilibrium. We’ll remember some of the books read, some of the ideas that momentarily passed for wisdom. We’ll recall seeing more dogs than humans on the sidewalks, stars filling the city skies on smog-free evenings. Most of all, we will remember the distance, the longing for each other when we could no longer touch. In the end, it will seem a lot like love. Let’s call it that.
• • •
Greg Watson’s work has been published in numerous literary reviews and anthologies, including The Wind Blows, the Ice Breaks: Poems of Loss and Renewal. His most recent collection is All the World at Once: New and Selected Poems. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood, published by Nodin Press.