Visit to St Mary’s Hospital, 1986 By Elena Croitoru-Reed

Visit to St Mary’s Hospital, 1986

My mother pulled my hand hard
through the hospital gates as though

I was a lifeline. Her mended stockings
looked like sutures on her legs & her shoes

were deformed with walking—she’d searched
our entire town that week to find milk,

& the mud splashes on the back of her legs
had stuck to her skin like leeches.

The hospital smelled of its straining bodies,
its boiled implements creaked

against tissues & rib cages. Lime powder
had been scattered over the middle

of the floor as though death would make
a game of getting to the right bed.

A nurse was waiting for my mother
with scissors & forceps, & the assurance

of someone who’d gutted fish at the market
for years & never heard them screaming.

I played hopscotch on black & white tiles until
I got my mother back: bloodied,

lighter & limping. She wouldn’t look at me
until years later. The walk home was long &

the morning air swelled with the voices of children
playing in the park, among the living. Their laughter

bounced against concrete fences, loud,
as though they thought their mothers would

always come back for them, even
to see them through the last hour of the night.