We breathe
in the night sky
“Lights on the tower are so pretty,”
Fresh from 8 hours in the hospital box waiting
“When are we going home?”
for someone to prod,
“I don’t want to spend the night.”
someone to report,
“My family misses me.”
and someone to report about a prod.
“I want to see my siblings.”
We move to the car in another chance to try – reminded of precarity.
Auto-pilot home I remember nights of greasy chicken with cheap beer, snuck into filthy sterile rooms when you were too small to chew as we ate refuge when nothing else seemed safe.
I take you out to your place.
It’s late.
It’s irresponsible.
We go out to your place.
And when we order, the cashier man asks how we are doing tonight. So I tell him we just got out of hospital jail and headed for our favorite dinner treats instead of home.
He was there today.
Nephew. 3 days in. Tomorrow home.
We feel this now.
The woman behind the counter who always calls you, “my friend,” leans in to ask if you’re going to be ok.
I don’t know how to answer, so I tell her you have epilepsy and today you had a seizure.
You will probably have another.
We try things and we hope that something will help us feel safe in your body. Tonight we live there sometimes alongside you.
She offers her own seizures; moments when, “I feel crazy, but I can feel them coming and I can control them and stop them. I think of something I love…chocolate, movies, anything.”
What do you love?
She will ask you next time when you are not feeling so seen.
So known.
She feels you.
I love that you can be seen by the world – unfolded in your fear to a comfort in the imbalance that surrounds us when we tell a little truth tonight.
The vulnerable professor 