A Few Words
She removed her coat and folded it over her lap as she sat down.
‘How are you today Leo?’
He pushed against the mattress with both fists, two pillows supporting his
back as he reached a more or less seated position. ‘I’m alright,’ he
gasped. ‘I’ve been reading.’
‘You and your reading; if you’d done less of that and taken more exercise
you might not be lying there now.’
He smiled. ‘I’ve written something.’
He leaned away from her and reached across to a bedside table, where books
and sheets of paper were piled in no apparent order.
She looked down to the side of the bed and examined the grey cardboard pan
of his toilet. It was moulded to the shape of a household lavatory bowl
and she wondered if that was some attempt to make patients feel at home.
Leo turned back, out of breath, and let his arms rest. ‘Here it is,’ he said.
She edged forward and took the sheet of paper from his left hand,
expecting a list of things to be done, things he’d forgotten to do, things
that would need sorting out.
‘What’s this, a poem?’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘You wrote this?’
‘Yes, will you read it to me?’
She hesitated. His breathing sounded more comfortable.
‘Later. I’ve brought you a newspaper and some chocolates. Wouldn’t you
like a chocolate?’
He let the back of his head rest against the uppermost pillow. ‘Please;
read it to me.’
‘Well, alright,’ she said, with some attempt at enthusiasm.
She coughed and glanced around the room, as if there was a wider audience.
‘A Sense of Promise’ she read, ‘by Leo Siran.’
She coughed again.
‘The future sings
Along a tunnel tightened
To his girth, that grew
Before the notes were sighted.
Now that shell, surrounding, cracks
And he can clearly hear the song.’
She continued to look at the page.
‘What does it mean Leo?’ she asked, before lifting her head and watching
him stare at the ceiling.
Ian Osler has worked in research, international sales and marketing and ineducation. He has a poem included in the anthology Click of Time –Reflections on the Digital Age and prose published in the online literary magazine ken*again.