You are alive, your hair
the scent of jasmine. You laugh
as the walls of the room move out
then in, like lungs.
I hug you from behind, kiss your cheek,
move you away from the brash
music of a phonograph.
At the hospital your mind floats
in a dream. I’m thirty-five, or five,
as you said I’d always be.
At night, as if preparing fig trees
to withstand a period below frost,
the nurses tie you up.