[Poékwot] Anesthesia (Meghan O'Rourke)

Say I was searching for God
I was in a hospital with an IV in my arm,
brittle plastic stem. I put my hand in my mouth
and the nurses took it out.                                       [...]
When I woke they said I'd been speaking for hours.
The machines blinked silver around me.
What took place when I was asleep?
Where had I been that I couldn't remember?
The childhood farmhouse, full of light?                      [...]


But no cotton drifted through the sun.
No grass turned dun in the shadows.
No cars drove on the road just out of sight
but within earshot. You forgot
who you were. People came to your bed                    [...]
and told you they loved you.
How could you know? You didn't remember
the past, you just felt it slipping out of your grasp,
like wheat in the chute of the silo

before you were born to think me, me, me.

 "Anesthesia", Extracted from Once – poems
by Meghan O'Rourke