By Gregory Rubinfeld, MD
The thick and sultry August outside,
The stale ammonia scented inside,
James The Poet, bedridden, writing in a fury,
Charlotte on a chair next to him, yawning.
So too have I become…
My whole frame taken, turned,
The very color of my flesh
Yellowed like the pages of an old book.
Moribund, we living antiques,
At the eternal doorway.
The snickering sardonic Footman ever beckoning.
The deep blue ink on the napkin ran some
But the words were still clear, burnished.
I asked The Poet,
Why of all places on a napkin
Well you know,
They are, by convention, condemned to disposability.
I believe they may last.
Ah, what a devil of a fix I’d be in
If not for my words.
Routine winged slow and languorous like birds of the season
Would bring the same old, same old,
Saccharine lactulose,
This diuretic in that dose,
That diuretic in this dose
Stack ‘em up next to the napkins, growing now
Prolific as my bowel movements
James smiled.
Yes routine beats out the rhythms
Thank goodness,
Cause my feet have two left feet
And my iambs are am nots
Twisted in knots, falling over themselves.
Oh well, here I go.
Can’t erase on these damn napkins,
Sweet reader bear with me
Like when you feel addled by the drink
S’okay, you think,
It’ll be gone by tomorrow
But it stays and overstays it’s welcome
Takes your mind that you once prided your—
Ah, blast there I go again,
I’ll die before I get purple and melodr—
That sweet thing, little Zoe
Asked when we were pregnant with our second
“Daddy daddy why is Mommy’s belly so big?”
Well, dear, cause there’s life growing in there.
Man, if she saw me now.
“Daddy daddy why’s your belly so big?”
Well, pumpkin, cause there’s death gro—
I cut him off
Like I did every morning
To tap on him, listen to his organs
Eavesdrop on those private internal conversations.
How we clung to our routines.
The nights, he said, were the hardest.
Charlotte, my beacon in this dark fathomless sea
Conked out while I whittle away.
See, in this vale of death still she shines,
How I lean on you, my angel,
You can never know
This thing will take my liver
Then my life
But my heart will love you
Beyond the sick corporeal,
Sleep, sweet angel, for tomorrow
Begins again that routine.
That routine, beating and beating
Measured feet and meter down to the syllable,
Down to the milligram
The same olds meds again and again
The creeping madness edging in
Closer and closer
Despite your sickeningly sweet drink
Bet if you just let me my drink—
Feel it now.
She’s getting tired of this
Her arthritis acting up too
What a great test I am to her now
How long can she shoulder this weight before—
Small breaks from routine glare
Like a slight increase in creatinine,
An insignificant drop of white cell count
Or a missing Charlotte.
The disease, running low on organs to hit
Found a new target
Think it was getting hard for her.
Seeing things slowly… uh… slowly
Deteriorate.
They’re goin, these parts of mine,
Ha, little Zoe, wonder if she’d see me now,
When we were pregnant with our second, she asked
“Daddy daddy why is Mommy’s belly so big?”
And uh… I said… uh….
Well, poetry is poetry, know what I mean?
So anyways I was telling Char—
Huh? Like I’m stopping traffic?
Okay.
Routine guides our footsteps when our will flags.
The stack of napkins stopped growing,
Till one day they vanished all together.
The Poet didn’t seem to mind,
He was, after all,
Wanting for health,
Then willing to settle for his mental clarity,
Then willing to settle for his wife’s company,
Then willing to settle for his words
Until finally that too was taken
And left him,
In a sense,
Wanting for nothing,
Bereft of everything.
The Poet didn’t seem to mind,
Encephalopathy’s apathy,
A parting gift,
The Poet didn’t seem to mind.
Dr. Gregory Rubinfeld, is an internal medicine resident at NYU Langone Health