You lay in a white hospital bed.
Curved in stiff white sheets, your conch,
You drifted in and out
Of sleep, dreaming.
The walls released the voices of those
Who’d suffered and died in this ward
From influenza, tb,
Diptheria, yellow fever.
No one moan was distinct:
A banshee wail sounded
Like a mosquito
Before drawing blood.
When the walls broke into a sweat,
Drops the size of Minié balls
Flooded the wood floors
And floated your bed.
Flushed out of the hospital you
Wound up in the river and then on a Gulf
Island with no
Drinking water.
You were so thirsty that you drank sand.
Your skin hurt: it turned red and black,
Peeled like fine gauze,
Drifted against the wind.
You shook the headboard of your hospital bed.
A nurse wrapped you in clean white sheets.
You’d beat this thing
If it killed you.