TEDDY

Hospitals turn my stomach
They’re never kind to me
The florescent lights, dull and yellow
The white floors, cold and sticky
That hospital smell – floral chemicals
The Sick crowd the hallways in overused gurneys
That held many dead ones and many sick ones too
And the floral chemical breeze
Brought me over to her, guiding me
Around this corner
And that corner
Through the double swinging doors
And I saw her against the cold wall, alone.
Propped up in the white gurney laid
The woman who welcomed me into this world
She was stuck there, cold, staring up into the void
Mouth hung open,
Arms pumping from chest to sky
Like a basketball player passing the ball quickly
I stared solemnly down at her in disgust . . .
::Dignity fleeting::
Her eyes caught in my face
the study of my expression
“I’m ready. I’m ready” she said,
 Half choking on the watery vomit her cancerous stomach
 Pushed upward. “I’m ready. I can’t be here anymore. It hurts.
 Josh, tell them to make it stop hurting.“
Hospital nurses are never kind.
“I lived a good life, right?" She said.
The fleeting remember the good,
for the good calms the soul
as it passes on by like a stream
beneath your feet
through a wooden bridge of unknown heights
She faded against the lights
That shone stubbornly upon her face
 and as I call upon the past
The movie plays itself for me to see
and I did see the saddest life
play-out in front of me...
 And the orphanages that raised her
Were not kind to her
And the years of cracked marbled madness were not kind to her
And days upon days too sad to open the curtains, for,
The sun was not kind to her
And the few times she smiled
when the days were numberless and alive
I remembered the most
For her smile was kind to me
But the world she left behind
Will never be kind to anyone.