When I couldn't bear it anymore <br />the nurse pointed to the glass door <br />and said: <br />the grounds are lovely <br />at this time of year. <br />I didn't like to tell her <br />I was dying for a cigarette; <br />there were quite a few inside, <br />gutted from the same. <br /> <br />I found a bench, private on a gravel walk <br />and tried to breath and inhale <br />all at once. I saw an old man eying me <br />greedily following each smoky tendril; <br />Jaysus, I could taste that, he whispered <br />and I nearly offered him one. <br />But the nurse stood sentinel on my manners. <br /> <br />Pleasantries suspended, down he sat; <br />flannel under duffle; woollen hat. <br />It's not the illness that I mind, he said <br />it's the dying; and he choked and wheezed <br />with mirth, gallows humour being in fashion here. <br /> <br />D'ya know what, he said, I hate the thought of them ones <br />pawing through my private things. <br />I left a letter in my bedside drawer- <br />I wish I'd burned it long ago. They'll <br />see my dirty underwear; What will they think <br />of the magazines? I could weep, he confided, <br />I'll die of the embarrassment; <br />this set him off again, asthmatic chuckling. <br /> <br />We were driven back inside with the rain; <br />I took up my accustomed place again <br />and tried to think of clever things to say <br />and visiting time dragged on - <br />while I made a mental inventory of <br />underwear and poetry and love letters <br />and tampons and diet sheets and tried <br />to calculate how fast they'd burn.<br /><br />Geraldine Moorkens Byrne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/secrets-of-the-dead/
