for Gabrielle Giffords
Of the five beds in the ICU
the only thing moving
was the damaged brain
.
I was of two brains
wasn’t I?
One of them was indisposed
I rose to the ceiling
and gazed at the damage below me
.
The pressure gauge needle aimed at red
and the top doc said Ah
That’s why the skin puffs out under the eyes
That’s the brain swell
indiscriminate in cases of TBI
Traumatic Brain Injury
The mother calls a priest
The father calls his lawyer friends
The sister stares at the fire extinguisher propped in the corner
seething at its red
.
A nurse and a doctor become one
tending the wet organ
A nurse and a doctor and a damaged brain
become one
late into the night
the doctor the brain’s borrowed pulse
the nurse its hand that sets the bone
.
I don’t know which to prefer
the beauty of the hospital’s silence at midnight
or the beauty of the hospital at midnight
when a rolling stretcher breaks its hum
.
This is not woodshop but the same principles apply
as a drill removes a piece of skull
Bits of bone drop to the floor
like irrational wooden dowels
One doc says Hold it steady
The cynic Watch your thumb
.
The brain rules the body
so when it’s away the body rebels
collapsed lungs broken jaw
extra bone growth in the knee
A hole in the neck helps it breathe
.
The damaged brain can’t signal the tongue to speak
The tongue is not damaged but it too feels the bruise
pulsing
.
When nobody’s listening the damaged brain says
NIPPLE
.
Even when the brain understands the words
double vision won’t let it read
Double vision is like having floaters in the eye
that are patterned to the scene
.
O skinny LPNs in your droopy scrubs
you loathe rolling over the body
to secure the piss pot under its bum
Celebrate that the brain is coming
the damaged brain!
.
I know numbers colors A through Z
the vocab of being
ten years old
I know I’m eighteen
I know chicken licked off the wing
but the damaged brain wants cinnamon and cumin seed
a fat purple crayon to color outside the lines
.
It was winter well into March
bone cold but no layer of white
softening the severe rocks on the horizon
The damaged brain hid behind a skull
shaved and scarred by a nonnative tribe
I am still a brain
knotted and crossed
by grooves of wisdom
that made the scalpel pause
Damage rocked through the brain like cat yowls
through the alley way that never
stop
Published 09/2017 by The Writing Disorder: http://writingdisorder.com/kristen-hoggatt-abader/