I have watched the stone man crumble, lying helpless beneath pristine white sheets; silver needles jutting from his arms. Hospitals can’t help a dying man; and this prison of lab coats has yet to bring him any good. I have watched him toss and turn, imprisoned by the fawning clutches of sterile gloves and tangled sheets. I have listened to his groans of agony; pain unseen. His cries reach out into the night, desperate for some stray; yet there is only mine. How can one so noble, so strong, wait so alone for death? When I gaze into his bloodshot eyes, only the devil stares patiently back. And during the longest hours of the opaque night, those most unbearable, I hear him sob her name. Perhaps it is not these scarlet wounds, these tube-like claws, these nameless painkillers that are weathering my mountain, perhaps it is instead the memories of smiling faces, warm love, wedding bells...angry words, and screeching tires. He must know by now of the horror and the sin. She died at his hands, and like any garden statue, my stone, now but a pebble, fears not death but the emptiness of living alone. After all, as grandpa always said; “Hospitals can’t help a dying man; and there isn’t a soul can coax the broken heart to beat...”
Photo by: Kendra Barnes
1 comment:
Interesting to know.
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