Hospital Poetry: Feasts of Hope

We are two skeletons hugging
silhouetted bone
against bone
against rib.
Painted fingertips matchsticking to
chopstick wrists,
slotting in to Jenga-brick-towers of
sadness and
all-the-King’s-horses.

We fall
Down
into darkness and despair,
far from rooks and men.
High in ivory babels of our own making –
lofts from whence we locked
innocence and ice princesses away in infancy.
Unlearning how to bear pain
how to feel and what it means for hearts to crack and melt
bleed, and heal.

We are afraid

Of those gentle white Humpty egg rows of
pearls in our fallopian webs;
Precious dew dropping, hush! to our thighs.
Soft, gelatinous constellations in our wombs –
a dress-up that doesn’t fit;
a play for which we lack curves and cues
(settling instead for NG tubes).

We are sick to death of breadcrumbs and witches' lolly-cooked houses;
sticky-sweet in the dark -
creeping traps hoping to snare us in bone cages and
feed us up plump enough to eat
(Mickey-Buttons in place of chocolate ones,
Navel-gazer doors suckered in to the stomach, with no
Hershey kisses to tuck us in good night).

Lost instead in games of hide and seek,
terrified that sitting on tuffets makes girlish hips gain weight,
we double back at the waist.

We are Peter Pan and Wendy children;
playing shadow games with secret realms
crossing thresholds of ourselves
Half in, half out.