Echoes
in nuclear medicine, corridors like infinity mirrors.
Everything screams off silver surfaces, lift doors, gurneys,
forks in the refectory. I’m there early.
Before visiting hours, smokers in slippers mingle
by ambulances. I follow echoes, lurch past nurses.
In triage, invalids clasp eye patches, vomit in papier-mâché.
Echoes of doors slamming, a clatter of crutches;
the chaplain’s picture in the prayer room (he gave
her funeral), an omen of the same shit recurring
(sunlight on her face, I tried to make it permanent;
tears on her arm, watching them flow like rivers;
pushing the emergency alarm, no one running).
I sit awake, refuse faith since the ground gave way,
a trapdoor to a place beyond all hope, metaphysics.
Consultants, not consultants, assassins; the chaplain,
not a chaplain, the Reaper; things, things, full of layers …
Upstairs, a scan rules out a cyst, anything benign.
My mind’s haywire, a glitter-ball. Each facet, valid;
they splinter, curse, a kaleidoscope of happenings.
Two time zones, concertinaed, a kind of shell shock
(mother in her wheelchair, billiousness, daffodils).
Synapses fire. Amygdala out of sync thinks
I’m war torn, a sniper’s crosshairs on my temple;
or better, Russian roulette in my head. The cylinder rolls …
I fear electrodes, matchsticks under my lids.
I vent my rage on inanimate things,
lash out, brake my hand on a bin, livid at the stars, providence.
It doesn’t exist, though even now a vestige of belief.
Upstairs a syringe finds the surest vein. She sleeps, hangs on.
A monitor bleeps. My love,
I swallow a valium; and the heartbeat slows, my breathing slows,
sweat dissolves, the dizziness, shaking slows. No more echoes
(the chair’s just a chair to sit upon, the nurses
are just healers, the chaplain, just a chaplain,
and daffodils, in the communal garden, just flowers
which bow and waver).
Patrick Wright has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Poems from his chapbook, Nullaby, have been published in several magazines, most recently Agenda, The Reader, and London Grip. He teaches Creative Writing at The Open University.