Leaving the Hospital
As the doors glide shut behind me,
the world flares back into being —
I exist again, recover myself,
sunlight undimmed by dark panes,
the heat on my arms the earth’ s breath.
The wind tongues me to my feet
like a doe licking clean her newborn fawn.
At my back, days measured by vital signs,
my mouth opened and arm extended,
the nighttime cries of a man withered
child-size by cancer, and the bells
of emptied IVs tolling through hallways.
Before me, life — mysterious, ordinary —