Another Death at St. David’s Hospital
by diy danna

Feeling the lump on the back of her neck,
She prays to be home by sunrise.
Hooked up to machines that beep in a
funeral march rhythm, like her pulse -
wrists manhandled by the pretty nurse who
scoffs at the lack of visitors.
But the angel with brown eyes never leaves
the young woman razed from the dead bedside.

She lies awake, praying the golf ball tumor shrinks
to one of the marbles she lost where the sidewalk ends,
before the surgeon’s blade cut out the heart of the rhyme
her old friend spoke to her all the time,
to the beat of the “Battle Hymn of The Republic”.
Nothing is original and nothing is sacred
when you’re dying from cancer.
The body is pillaged like a Holy Crusade.

She dies on the cutting table, dreaming of waves
of water on the sandy shore of Point Bolivar.
It’s another sad affair, with the grieving beloved
wondering who will get that pearl and sterling swan broach
with the Swarovski crystal accents shimmering
like sun on surf. We kiss another wave goodbye,
wondering who will pick up the fallen rose petals
at the funeral – and make a potpourri with her divided ashes.