The Great Suspension: Poetry

Prompt response: making the familiar unfamiliar

Photo by Sandra Grünewald on Unsplash

I climb the elevator
to your light blue hell
stick-man father
wasted, yes
unrecognizable
while the rest of your family
fights expanding waists

the wires of life
here for the great suspension
a shirt you’d never buy
hair gone chemically
absent, short
dull gun-coloured now
hidden for a while
beneath a flaming bandana
and cowboy hat

still have both your eyes
shocking, after all
and I’ve forgotten anything
you murmured
but still thinking I’m too young
to deal with this
hovering
waiting for the end
one way or another

Years later
I’m in my own hospital hades
think it’s good
my child doesn’t come here
to watch life hang in the balance
tubes and needles
blue
…the blue of hell and
limbo