Crabs, After Eight

Most wards have an assortment of visiting hours. And most people obey these arbitrary rules. But, you know the film Good Will Hunting with Robin Williams and Matt Damon? There's a bit where Robin Williams' character is discussing his wife's illness and he says, "you wouldn't know about sleepin' sittin' up in a hospital room... for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes... that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you." My parents are like this. Visiting hours never apply. Nurses and doctors never disturb their vigils. My brothers arrive at strange hours. My mother is offered blankets and pillows. My father sometimes threatens to stay on in my mother's place, but luckily for him, no one has as yet taken him up on the threat. I am usually stoic and smiling at the final night's goodbyes. But sometimes, just sometimes...

Here is a crabby little poem dedicated to the dark fleece of my father's jacket as it departs, for once, just after visiting hours.

You leave me here

to rot

Among the carcass

of my words.

Do you know this place?

It is the place of my extinction.

I become obsolete

here.

Death ceases to matter

here.

There is too much of it around;

And Life

makes no sense

No sense to me

At all.

Image: Salvador Dali, Ascension