After the first hospital
three hours and I was
on a plane home.
The Depakote lucid
blackout and another
day clean erased
Second hospital and
they let me leave
believing I’d be
on dialysis like when
Dad became a grey
brown husk of himself
Alone is another word
for the dark cloak cast
by history’s little presents
Sixteen years after he was
called home, and my Mom
and I are still at war with
the labcoats and Borderline
nurses but we enter fully
loaded and long past exhaustion
Each new day we breathe slits
another open and no we
don’t take this shit politely or lying
down. I called the head nurse
to run my labs and a clean bill
came back furiously. And today
not a damn thing left funny or
unbroken apart by the festering
August sun.