Kade Wolf
Poetry Editor
In the first of June,
I awoke to a sharp twinge in my lower back. It has been occurring more frequently, but no matter how many stretches and walks I take with Nurse, it never stops pestering me.
I can no longer count the years of which I have been alive, but the wrinkles in the mirror that pass by me as I struggle to use the washroom speak more than I. The white hospital walls chip at my memory, and the only thing keeping this old mind from depravity is the photo frame displayed on the bedside table. Every morning, without fail, do I look over through these aged eyes at my wife and daughter, smiling beside me in our old home. Now, I can no longer call it ours after my transfer to this facade of a prison, but rather it is only theirs. Yet, even as I know they are smiling without me, I can manage to lift my back to sit up only with their gaze.
Every day passes exactly as the one prior—except, against all standard belief, I continue to deteriorate, and nothing reaches the light. Daily, do I get fed by Nurse with an uncertain smile, awkward as I choke on the fruit seeds in the yogurt that has almost gone stale, while knowing I used to inhale such a snack in minutes. It now takes me an hour or two. Daily, must I be forced out of bed around early afternoon for a walk knowing I used to have to convince other caregivers that I could run a mile and back. Daily, do I see the little busboy come in exactly at eight in the morning to mop the floors and wipe down the windows, eyes darted to the floor or dusty corners that he never seems to bother cleaning. I see him return four hours later to repeat the process, perhaps quicker. In another four hours, I must wager whether or not I will see the boy.
I believe he cannot meet my gaze because he cannot be untruthful. Though, Nurse continues to whisper to me that the sun shall shine with time—though my wife and daughter come to my bedside and kiss my arm and mimic Nurse’s lies covered in bittersweet citrus—he knows exactly what I have come to know. He cannot understand this pain, but he cannot speak inaccurate veracities and tell me I shall surely see tomorrow’s sunrise.
Though I understand this, I do not covet him and his youth. Even when I hear slight sounds of giggling and jests right before he comes in for his regular cleaning right at eight, I do not hold these strange feelings against him.
Today is a beautiful day. He opens the window today after cleaning. For the first time, though still without reaching my eyes, he speaks to me, “Today is a nice day, you think?”
The wind is gentle. It caresses his hair like I would to my daughter and is kind on his skin, far from the undesirably insipid afternoons that come only to plague the aged after the young have fled.
It takes me a moment, but I gradually hang my legs over the edge of the bed and make my way to stand, holding onto the bedside table for support. The busboy cannot tear his loving gaze from outside the window.
I know well those laughs were daggers pointed at this wrinkled soul—laughs only the youth can relay. But even still, I do not envy his youth. I cannot envy his youth. I will not envy his youth.
No. I shall save him from this curse of age.
I stumble towards the boy. Still does he stare out the window. Never shall I forget the way he flinched against my skin as I jostled his waist.
May you forever live as free as you are now, and if we ever meet again, as your godsend, do give me praise.
I had hoped to speak such words, but nothing could emit from these fake teeth of mine. I will take his last desperate howl as my own.
In the second of June,
I witnessed a police questioning for the first time. Perhaps this wilted soul still has more experiences to find.
The fellows in the lower floors of this white prison heard the boy. Soon enough, the window effortlessly reflected flashy red and blue lights, and for the first time in what feels like millennia, Nurse ran into the room, panicked, with a policewoman in tow.
I was asked if I knew anything that happened. I simply said that the open window was the culprit, luring the boy to doom. Such a lie came out as if it were a habit to do so. Both ladies were occupying my room for perhaps an hour until Nurse told me that the policewoman will be back tomorrow.
I sit here now, a quarter until his appointed time, interrogating myself over the madam sitting to my bedside. Her face is patient, unsimilar to that of the boy’s, yet there is hesitancy in the beginning breaths of her sentences. Despite this, she fights to ask me question after question: all in a tone like I had known him as a father.
Did he look at me? No. His eyes were towards the sun. Did he speak to me? No. His mouth was his footsteps, silent. Did he descend due to another? No. His goal was absolute, an unequivocal destiny laid out for him the moment he opened the door. At the answers I provided, which some were only half a falsity compared to the rest, the policewoman’s initial patient mannerisms slowly showed holes. She eventually stopped the questioning right at eight, and while I see no one enter the room, I see her rise from her seat and thank me for my time, leaving with a frown I could have never imagined for her to bear.
I sit solemnly in my room for some time afterwards. The window has stayed open since yesterday. It seems no one has the heart to close it, but I cannot judge when I can still feel the cheap fabric of his clothing itch my palms. Yet, even though the thought corrupts me, I know I have done a right. I have done more for that boy than any snob of a corporate employer will ever manage to.
Nurse comes back into the room to check in on me in the late afternoon. We have not gone for our walk today. She understands how imperative it is for my health, so they say, yet she cannot lift her face enough to skip to my bedside and take my arm. Her face is weighted with a somber tone as she closes the door behind her and places a water cup on the bedside table, holding her own in her eyes. She mumbles something that I believe to be an apology before walking to the windowsill. There is no breeze out in this time of the afternoon. Her hair is still.
I look at her and move. Oh, Nurse, how long were our old walks in the early afternoon? How long has it been since I last saw your frown? How long have you endured the terror of this workplace only because of your time with me? Oh Nurse, kind, kind Nurse: the memory of your name is written in scribbles, but the image of your manmade smile plagues me strikingly. The image of how you look behind to meet my close stare, either terrified or startled, will remain in my dreams.
Oh, Nurse, will you let me save you, too?
But of course that too was left unsaid.
In the third of June,
Those lights and sirens prove to be no stranger. I see them again through the window’s reflection for so long that the colors merge into a blotchy lilac mess and the sirens blur into television static.
The policewoman returns to my room half ‘till nine. The process containing an awkward staring contest interrupted with out-of-order questions repeats itself once again, and I have yet to unveil the truth. Bigger than any of the questions the policewoman may ask, I wonder ceaselessly when such an event will happen. As of now, when looking into the window, no one has dared to touch or clean since the boy’s retribution; I cannot give an answer.
I am left alone by noon. I suspect I will spend the remaining hours in silence, and if these hands mimicking those of a savior were never conceived, I would be missing Nurse’s entrance for my lunch. Yet I prove not to be alone—for the door slowly swivels open to reveal another patient, clad in the same dull blue attire as I.
His face is recognizable. He is my neighbor in this hell decorated with obnoxious machinery and tempting substances. Even through these nasty circumstances to which I have submitted under, he shows me a smile, albeit stiff, and laughs as he goes to support his back on the windowsill.
His voice is soft-spoken as he relays me a tale. His own caregiver hears talk that this room has begun harboring the Devil: that those who enter feel entitled to doom. It is a funny rumor.
Strangely, I look at him with desperation. We are of the same age, he and I, and for a moment I feel all these sins wriggling on my tongue. But these are not sins, are they? To him that holds this mutual malediction—this mutual curse that scars us with wrinkles—this cannot be considered sin. I again serve absolute remedy.
As I rise for a third time, he is the first to notice. He looks at me and heaves out a laugh that sounds as if it had been locked for ages. I have not heard one so genuine as this before, not in all the short time we had known one another. But he can sympathize with this absurd reasoning, right?
I have nothing to say to him. He is the first to be silent in return.
In the fourth of June,
I continuously hear lisps from other staff and inmates of such an outrageous tale. They say the Devil has settled into this room—that he has tainted with the handle, that he lurks beneath my bed: all other silly talk—and though they hold the false belief that I am a saint stuck within, they are too cowardice to save me. Such an action would only go to waste.
The superstition has not been unpractical, though. It currently wards off any more officers and staff from entering this room, fearing for their wellbeing. As such, I have not been fed today. The only person brave enough to open the door to do so was her: my wife, whom I had not seen in the last month.
She must have been receiving word of the odd occurrences happening here. I can tell by the look of worry plaguing her face as she hesitantly brings a tray of food to my bedside table, right before the picture of us and our family.
Her smile is sad. She fights to keep it still, then flees to go run her hands on the window’s frames.
I suppose now I remember all that had burnt away for the two of us. This love I harbor for her aged with this body, and so has it for her. And suddenly it is hard to remember what her true smile was and all the ways she laughed. These days lacking any contact, stray from a few monthly visits, these tears that we both refuse to show one another…did any of this exist before my imprisonment?
Does she remember what we were?
Does she remember who I was?
That, amongst many other things, remains unanswered. Her responses would reach the sky, but not this heart.
In the fifth of June,
I find it hard to be in a room so desolate, but this is what it has come to. Whenever I see other prisoners and staff scurry past this room, I silently pray for them to step forward.
Yet the longer I remain in this silence, only sirens ringing constantly, it gets increasingly harder to defend myself.
I do not feel bad for what I have done. Does that make it right?
I cannot feel bad for what I have done. Does that make me right?
This vow to save others around me, those who take the daring step into this room, tugs too tightly at my deteriorating soul. It continues to persist, even as the one to step in this room manages to be my only family left: my daughter.
She tiptoes in with a downcast look. She carries flowers for her mother, which she places on the bedside table, right beside the tray of food and water cup that I have forgotten to consume. That I will not consume. That no one is willing to retrieve.
It is here that I feel snakes crawling between the cracks of my spine.
My dear daughter…
Ah, even this urge saves not you.
In the sixth of June,
I dig for reason. Sensibility has escaped me since that day. My fingers still tremble, remembering his flinch.
This must be right for all. For the old, there is nothing more here nor there. For the youth, there was nothing to begin with. We have stolen it all and shall take it to our graves.
The Devil made home in these eyes of mine. Those I lay sight upon fall beneath this curse. In response, I stare at myself for hours in the washroom.
A little boy strides in. He is blinded by the tale.
Please, boy…
Do not come any closer.
At midnight,
I take a broken scissor blade from the washroom cabinet.
I close the window.
The boy is beneath me.
Midnight was sucked ripe from lilac lights. A polluted sunset covers us, thick and sultry.
I pierce these eyes and squeeze the iniquity between my fingernails.
The Devil is gone.
I am saved.