The Weather that Knew My Name

 

The Weather that Knew My Name

By the third night, even the fluorescent lights
seemed tiresome:
their thin electric stutter
over the neurology ward,
as if the building had learned my name
and was forgetting how to say it correctly.
Someone had taped a bulletin above the coffee machine:

PLEASE LABEL ALL FOOD
REMOVE ITEMS EVERY FRIDAY

Below it, in smaller handwriting:

Whoever keeps stealing yogurt
your mother would be ashamed.

At 3:00 AM, the residents moved softly
from room to room
like men searching a dark river
for something already carried away.

Outside, rain glazed the parking lot
to the color of amber bottles
left in the windows of old pharmacies.

A nurse named Elena folded herself briefly
into a plastic chair near the elevators,
closed her eyes for what she called
a "professional nap."

Not sleep exactly:
just five minutes
with no one asking anything of her body
or asking her to remain the same person.

In Room 814, a man with liver failure
kept whispering numbers into the dark.
No one could say what they counted.

Toward morning, the ice machine groaned awake.
Someone laughed too loudly down the hall.
The sky began loosening its black seams.

Elena stood, smoothed her wrinkled scrubs,
and returned to the ward
as if the night had only practiced her absence.