by KateBush on Thu May 13, 2004 10:02 am
Surrounded by power yet in possession of none,
the doctor promised me answers-
"you'll be there a couple of days, out in no time. They'll make you better."
Those words seared my mind in spitting torment
As I tried to sleep in a room where the lights never go out,
yet darker than an abyss,
As I had done for weeks.
The realisation of my nothingness was quietly,invisibly devastating.
Alice without her wonderland,
I shrunk away to a microscopic grain of sand
In the confines of that bed, that ward
Where colour and life slid away
Among a clutter of drug trolleys, morphine filled syringes, sedatives, oblivion.
The woman opposite was dying and knew.
The mastectomy was a formality, she said.
But she was more powerful and knowing than all the consultants combined.
She obliterated their tyranny
Returned me to my usual size- small but vicious.
We spoke about fear. What about the future, I asked.
Atleast you have one, she said, grey faced and soul-ridden.
More potent than any diagnosis- gave me the strength to regain my autonomy.
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Written before Christmas in NineHells while under the influence of v. powerful painkillers...no apologies.I never realised how weird it was til now.
[hr]a red rose is not selfish because it wants to be red rose. It would be selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red, and roses. -Oscar Wilde
Intelligence can leap the hurdles which nature has set before us- Livy