Visit to St Mary’s Hospital, 1986

My mother pulled my hand hard 

through the hospital gates as though

I was a lifeline. Her mended stockings 

looked like sutures on her legs & her shoes 

were deformed with walking—she’d searched 

our entire town that week to find milk,

& the mud splashes on the back of her legs

had stuck to her skin like leeches.

The hospital smelled of its straining bodies, 

its boiled implements creaked 

against tissues & rib cages. Lime powder 

had been scattered over the middle

of the floor as though death would make 

a game of getting to the right bed. 

A nurse was waiting for my mother 

with scissors & forceps, & the assurance 

of someone who’d gutted fish at the market 

for years & never heard them screaming. 

I played hopscotch on black & white tiles until 

I got my mother back: bloodied,

lighter & limping. She wouldn’t look at me

until years later. The walk home was long & 

the morning air swelled with the voices of children 

playing in the park, among the living. Their laughter 

bounced against concrete fences, loud, 

as though they thought their mothers would 

always come back for them, even 

to see them through the last hour of the night.