Nursing Home Woes/ My Bed is Safe
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This is how Elza stands up every day.
She has to convince her frail, 94 year old body
To do the work it’s supposed to do on its own.
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She pleads with it as if it were
A separate entity
That she must beg to do her will
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This is how I get out of bed every day.
My 18 year old body is not frail
But I get into fights with it when I tell it to get out of bed.
onetwothreeonetwothree
I say
But it does not want to give in.
Elza has a strong mind
Even though her legs are weak.
Every day she does the
Unthinkable-
Breathing
Moving
Living.
I cannot think about tomorrow
Or the next day
Because my head will fill with dread
Onetwothreeonetwothree
I know I will have to do this every day
For the rest of my life.
It’s exhausting.
Elza is excited by little things like
Going to breakfast every morning.
Onetwothreeonetwothree
She chants.
It seems a miracle when her torso rises and her legs move off the surface of the bed.
Her feet slide inside her slippers on the floor and she is ready for the day to come.
Sometimes,
Onetwothreeonetwothree
Isn’t enough.
Sometimes,
I need to be more convincing.
ONETWOTHREEONETWOTHREE
It’s not that my bed is warm and I am cold
It’s not that my bed is happy and I am sad
It’s that the world is ready for me but
I am not ready for the world.
ONETWOTHREEONETWOTHREE
Sometimes,
It’s too loud inside my head.
Elza loses her balance a lot but
She gets right back up.
Life is a stretch of mountains-
Up and down. Up and down.
Elza knows that the top of the mountain is the place she wants to be,
but she also knows that she must go down to reach the next up.
Her life is a simple cycle of simple events.
She is too gone to be anything but happy about life’s
Simplicities.
For 18 long years it
Has been hard to
Get out of bed and
I know it will continue for
Eternity or
At least it seems so.
Elza’s brain does not know much any more after 94 years of dying
Little by little.
But her bones and muscles fear that
One day
She will say onetwothreeonetwothree for the last time
One day
She will get up for the last time
One day
She will sit down for the last time.