Leigh Chadwick

Hospital Poem

I wake up as myself and then wake up as another me and then another me says hello to the first or second or eighty-fifth or three millionth me. A storm brews in the lunchroom, chipping the coffee pot, knocking over a chair. I am wearing a gown covered in charcoal. The walls are padded in foam. I bump into the foam and bounce back and forth like a game of Pong. An orderly sprinkles me with salt and leads me toward a set of doors. We pass a closet filled with jackets shaped like pretzels and white as clouds. An applause sign hanging from the ceiling begins to flash. Most laugh tracks are a symphony of hyenas or echoes from the dead, the orderly says. I don’t know how I got here. The double doors open. The walls sigh. I don’t know how I got here. I close my eyes. A meteor falls from the sky.