To Ms. Leons.

There you are again.
Sinking sulkily in your bed with the basin tray next to your brows.
The blinds are raised, and the dusty, stained heater chirps forth it's air.
The paint-chipped walls, the blown out bulbs, the ole 1960's finest toilet bowl.
They await in standstill, those that inoculated me with grace over and over and over again.

The room presented it's finest findings! You got the crown! as it's prize treasure.
I could have sworn you were Sophie, but in person and non-wagging form.
With the widening of your eyes I was greeted with the sign. Yes, I saw the sign.

The sign. That weird, inexpressibly esoteric sign. Familiarly esoteric, though.

And I had not forgotten you, nor your smelly vomit.

And to be socially adept and polite, I anticipated my mindful inquiries with "How have you been? How are you feeling? What's been going on in your life lately?"
But I don't want to ask those questions. I don't want to talk. I don't even like talking, really.

I wanted to tell you that I've watched you Monday and Tuesday, and then Wednesday through Friday. Every time I came into the room, you've tried to raise your neck up a little farther to see more past my big head. Your bodily function odor held it's own up in this joint. Even so, your flatulence became my normal background music and secretly, I jammed to the beat.

And you lie there. And lie there. There. There. There in that bed. And you tell me how you've been married four times, how your daughter is gay and now in your life, you think. Day in and day out. Lying there. Thinking.

And you try to nutshell yourself to me. Signifying marriage, fetus' sexuality, and your current practices. But I didn't come for the nutshell, I came for the nut. I like you, the nut.

And I fill your cup full of pills and you smile, indicating, "Wow, I'm excited you're young and have life to live and I know you." That's what you tell me, all the time.

And now I do want to talk. I do want to ask you some questions. How do you do it? How do you take me as a big bally munch of gooeyness, thrown into the swirly lands of depravity and redemption, insanity and complete lucidness meeting up for lunch, and onward to a land where I feel a wound healed without any skin? I beg of you, why?

And so, as the swanky heater cranked itself through the wall, so too the heavens raged on chanting, knowing that their light could no longer be concealed.