by Anonymous
Like an angel
wheeling a broken soul to heaven,
she pushes down corridors, up elevators,
past rooms of machine-cradled people,
through ghosts of minutes passing
like a succession of rapid breaths.
There is no sound of pain
to match the silent cries of rage
of someone newly suffering.
The last hallway, a fluorescent desert,
ends in a cave of radiology equipment,
cold, quiet, peaceful,
where she moves like a shadow
gently touching here, then there.
Pressure from a lead apron
becomes warmth; warmth becomes sleep,
and the moment is almost long enough
to reach the edge of a dream,
but the body is shifted.
Pain, white and sinewy, returns
with the clarity of a developing negative.
Someone screams, like a flash of light,
before night fills the final frame.
