Civilized:

My first love wore navy

and bunker pants-

Strapping

as red suspenders

Laying me down

on a Gurney—

As oxygen tubes

fill my nostrils

I know the drill!

SIT STILL

let the doctor

read the EEG,

Wires hanging from my head,

like Doc Oc

abnormal misfire,

Lucky me,

as if I

the bullet

could gauge depths

Or just grazes me?

SENT

through a cylinder;

MRI like a piece of printer paper

I’m being beamed

into a spaceship-

Though I

refuse to flinch!

I lay

nauseous

flashes of

morning cartoons-

I feel my body

convulse

I can’t converse

I lay

unconscious

nothing but darkness...

When I came to,

my love came to the rescue

He’d run through fire for me

Wheezed

as my sides ached

puffing away on a nebulizer

His Smiles,

were elastic!

Elevating my mood

He’d pretend

stuffed animals could conversate-

A mustard leather jacket,

covered me;

another my pillow...

I knew one day,

I would marry him

visible as 3M

ELATED

(ecstatically happy)

my civil servant