Coma

Sister, asleep for three days, I notice small broken glass sparkling near your bedroom door at home, placed there by the cat. The glass matches your beads and wills you back to the movement of thread and needles. A baby attempting to walk, you sang and danced instead. Our grandfather smilingly called them Indian Doctor songs. Through our childhood we rested for school in a noisy metal bed, telling one another to "Sleep." or "Be Still." You cry in this present sleep. The dried saline tracks are washed off in the mornings. We pull your memory to your still body with the vernacular of family endearments, the pet names. Fearful to disturb the tubes attached to your arms, reaching carefully into the square order of medicine, I notice your body is hot. No response. Brain waves tell me you dream. Do you see me? Are you perched above us? Is our grandfather here with you? This room is too white. I sit here in the allotted hours for worry, waiting for the bells to strike, like the Washat bell's clangor before a hymn. Waiting, time is a stoic machine. The room fills with talk. Our grandmother, who is not here, vibrates in a small voice, a rhythm that is a peaceful breathing. The clever thoughts of people buzz in the machinery. How did you learn to kill yourself? Who dared to teach you? Perhaps it was me and now I must ravel the twisted example.

I wail in sleep for you to live, welled tears rolled to dry salt and wounds in the morning.

Copyright University of Nebraska Press 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved