This morning a breakfast burrito on a placemat map
of Italia, coffee as thin as the IV needle in his arm,
blood pulsing into daylight where it doesn’t belong.
He went to Italy, once, for cappuccino, country-surfing
from Annecy in the alps through Geneva and Mount Blanc
in one quick day with a girlfriend long gone, in those years
living in New York on instinct and early slight poems
he’d declaim in any venue, once in the subway corridor
between the Times Square Shuttle and Lex, booming
like Dylan Thomas, but not as drunk, for quarters,
his first book slowly dying. Occupational therapy wants
him to fry two eggs to show he can take care of himself
and not burn down the house. He suggests instead
a frittata, eggs with thin slices of salmon, onion, basil,
tomato, gruyere slow cooked, and the therapist laughs
and hands him a brick of margarine. He slides the cooked
eggs into the trash and she clears him for daily life.
Last night he dreamed he was in a Greek restaurant
where the owner refused to serve him coffee.
He angrily threw a glass of orange juice against the wall
and fled, pursued by Greeks. Woke in a sweat.
Called the CNA to empty his catheter bag, urine
too dark with bits of shredded clot reminding him
that he isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
After breakfast, Caroline leaves for three days on the coast
with her girlfriends, leaving a text kiss :-* on his iPhone.
