RED KOI, BLACK SKIRT

A radiologist rushes by
in a black wool skirt
splashed across with koi;
red fins, white bellies,
swimming in the creases
as she moves.

The skirt is from a tiny shop
in France; she says this sadly,
knowing she cannot satisfy
my craving for koi
beneath my own fingers,
in friendly wool.

I pass Fiona Sampson’s ‘Orpheus Variation’,
and travel up the long tube
to the topmost floor,
which tucks me away
from apheresis, and other humans,

and I swim
into the closed wards of the infected,
the diseased, worming in to join
the dark night of our souls.

But when the blood moon draws closer,
and blue Monday arrives, I arise
and begin to shed the creature that holds sway;
small sheddings are small victories, these days.
©Shaista Tayabali, 2019
participating in Dverse Poets Pub

(I thought about tacking on a different ending because the hospital did let me out, but only to reveal the next morning that they had found the bacterial culprit, so I haven’t swum to freedom yet. I have a cannula in me and nurses arrive daily to my house to administer antibiotics through a drip they set up. Something is being shed, I have to believe, or else the dark nights will claim me again...)

THE MYSTERY OF THE ORIGIN OF SEPSIS

Four days in a blue box and then suddenly, huge windows overlooking fields of gold, a giant chessboard and the brief sounds of children playing.

I have been admitted again. For the third time this year - and the manyth fever spike. The Mystery of the Origin of Sepsis continues to baffle. Is it Infection or is it The Lupus? The awful perennial question. For the doctors it is a problem that must be solved to avoid over treatment. For me, although I have an equally honed detective instinct, the clues all occur in the same body. The same mind must control the same fears and maintain a ninja like balance.

In the blue box with no windows - let us call it MDU or Medical Decisions Unit - lives Rosie. Rosie's husband Dave was brought into hospital and since he is her carer, Rosie was admitted at the same time. For much of each day and each night, Rosie keeps her coat on and her handbag tucked neatly into the crook of her elbow, ready to leave. Not a word in her strings of sentences makes relevant sense, but must surely make perfect sense in the world she inhabits all by herself. T'was quite alarming having Rosie peer round my curtains like a friendly bat looking for her mate. It was only on the last night when another patient with dementia arrived, one with a particularly nasty tongue, that Rosie's comparative sweetness shone through. A lost little bat, in the entirely wrong cave.

And then I was wheeled away to be transferred here to Hepatology. I waved royally to my fellow inmates as Greg The Porter deftly manoeuvred my bed past them - you lucky duck, said Brenda, turning green, thinking I was heading home (although how I could leave, bed et al...). It was my opposite neighbour's 78th birthday and she was teary hugging me goodbye. We make friends fast in the blue boxes...

Margaret wasn't allowed flowers in MDU, not even birthday roses... but here in Hepatology, my cousin Imran, dressed in an excellently cut suit jacket, brought me Chicky Chocky Speckled Eggs and a delicate bouquet of pink and white posies. They'll have to wrestle the posies away from me...

RETURN OF THE ANAEMIC WARRIOR

This being the year of the Horse (my year, according to the Chinese horoscope), I ought to be leaping about the place like a Disney princess, astride my dreams..

Instead, this summarises me rather neatly…

I have it on authority that I am anaemic and osteopenic - while not wildly so (not enough to be hooked up to receive a blood transfusion), it is enough to have me stapled to the bed most days. In between I write. My masters is nearly over, and I am almost done with the final 15,000 word project. But since I am only at the start of my memoir and novel, I feel as though there are great mountains yet to climb and I am sprawled at the foot of them, scrabbling about for nuts and berries to sustain myself. And green leafy vegetables… my dear Uncle Z bought me a blender and I plug into myself these nourishments. Here's hoping…

Cheers!

Illustrator of first image: Quentin Blake

Rest via google