Cheryl Snell

Bed

It barely contains me now. I wonder how
I imagined my future in something so narrow.
The mattress sags and the slats keep slipping out
like a truth no one wants to hear.

All the way to the hospital, tree branches
point out the exits.

The player-piano in the waiting room shines,
a lake of black ice. Keys struck by a phantom
unsettle me; my sister continues to beat time
on her knee, index finger a crooked metronome.

I glimpse tattered veins in the bend of her elbow
and curse the technician who last bruised her.

This morning I thought I saw a new beginning.
She sat at the table, clear-eyed and cheerful.
How’d you sleep in your old bed? She asked me
like a hostess. Still afraid of the dark?