Second Story Skeleton

The halls of this old hospital still reek 

of keeping alive. In curtain-cordoned rooms 

children used to cry, and mothers slept 

in plastic shells of chairs. 

Outside, blooms of frangipani scattered 

into the air of the hung laundry, green gowns 

stamped faintly with the hospital name. 

How can it look so much the same 

after all these decades? There’s the cracked 

tennis court where Dad and other doctors sprinted 

back and forth. And next to it, under ages  

of pine needles, that grave in which I buried 

the remains of a tokay gecko, pealing 

its polka-dotted skin. I used to be scared 

of skeletons, of a teaching model strung 

in a dusty upstairs room. 

I spotted it once, sneaking around the second story. 

When I told this to Nana, she couldn’t stop  

a giggle before her whisper: 

I have one too. 

It’s time to go. Past the O.R. annex I feel a pull— 

but it’s nothing. The bombs lined in these webs 

are only leftover oxygen tanks. Then clip-clack,  

a track,  

something I find I follow 

 slacking up the steps.