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SALLY RYDER HOGAN

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Three Calls

Call 1

It’s late afternoon

She calls

The baby is unwell

She’s taking her to the doctor

I’m relieved

No need to worry.

 

Call 2

We’re at the hospital, she says

They think she has pneumonia

Waiting for blood tests

I’ll ring you back.

 

Call 3

Is someone with you she asks

It’s the question my father asks

when the news is bad.

I steel myself.

She has leukaemia.

The Space Between

I keep searching for something that will bring meaning

Maybe I’ve missed it.

I’m trapped in the space between.

Waiting

Time pulses by

Sedated seconds

Alarmed asleep

Alarmed awake

 

Time passes

I see the city below through slatted a venetian

Blinded to the hour

Darkening each day

I wait

To see your swollen pale face look back at me and light the black

Frozen

Each day I take the lift up to

Level 11

I enter her sealed sanitised world

through the air lock doors that heave and breathe like slumbering sentinels.

I wash

I watch

I wait.

I hope.

One evening I leave late.

I take the lift down. Alone.

I am empty.

Numb. Frozen.

The doors of the lift slide open.

Ethereal voices of a choir fill the cavernous void

enveloping me in a blanket of humanity that seeps deep inside me and slowly thaws my frozen blood.

Safe

The day begins as it ends

Darkness and shadow

Inside out

Outside in

She seeks comfort at her mother’s breast

The translucent glow of her skin pale against the white sheets. She is

Too weak to cry

Too exhausted to push unwanted hands away.

Retching and wretched.

Her tiny hand seeking the dark mole on her mother’s hip that tells her she is safe

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Fury

I want to feel the fury

Rage and scream

at the injustice

I used to be angry and now I’m just sad.

Sounds and sighs

Translucent walls heave and sway each time the door opens and a body brushes past
She sleeps peacefully in her bed
She is accustomed to the constant sounds and sighs around her
I worry that the cries of the child in the next bed will wake her but the sound of the mother trying to weep silently on the either side of the curtain is both sad and
comforting.
Flimsy curtains
Our only shield from grief
We are not alone in our pain
And heartache

The Still

A rustle amplifies in the still.

Yellow gowns with masked faces gather round the bed side.

Purple hands glove human touch.

Be quiet.

Be still.

The world has stopped turning.

Comfort in crumbs

My bed is soft and crunchy

It is my retreat.

Her sanctuary.

Toast and rice bubbles

A trail of insatiable hunger.

Comfort in crumbs.

Outside the hospital

The young boy holds a crutch under each arm

He swings them wildly

I wonder how he can possibly remain upright

A bicycle swerves madly toward

Him

The boy stands his ground

Swipes at the rider who laughs victoriously as he just holds his balance despite the bandage on the thigh of one leg and the heavy plaster on the other

Their mother looks on and takes aim at both

I’m fuckin sick of this

I’m not fuckin

bringin you back here if ya fall off agen!

Memento Mori #1

Catch the Moon

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