literature

Hospital Collection: Nameless

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Rosary0fSighs's avatar
Published:
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Literature Text

There's an anorexic patient with me
in the mental health ward.
I've never heard her speak
or touch her lips
to the plastic hospital food.
Her skull is wrapped in
the alien fingers of
a pale feeding tube.
And I wonder if she's still
the keeper of her soul.

Her wrists are as frail as
the silver threads
of delicate spider webs.
Her skin is fragile
and paper-soft.
I've never heard her speak
or touch her lips.

She's just another patient
(without a name).
Her eyes are lifeless,
lost.
And I wonder what that makes
me;
another patient
who sees only
her disease.
I realised today, that one of the patients I keep thinking about, who was with me in hospital - I never knew her name.
And it makes me so sad, because we used to smile at each other,
but I never learned her name or heard her voice.
and I wonder if that makes me less human.
© 2009 - 2024 Rosary0fSighs
Comments39
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natkatmac's avatar
The pain that this poem emits, both for the narrator and the subject, is overwhelming.
Sometimes I want to go to a psychiatric hospital and hug every patient because I know that it's hard.