By Ryklee Bench
She slept a lot
when I was five.
So much so,
I don’t remember her awake.
But she slept so beautifully.
September, she lays
in a room of white.
A room of beeping,
a room of sound,
yet you wouldn’t hear her there.
So you wander. And you find something.
Not the muffled cartoons,
or the stinging sanitizers.
It sits untouched, unopened.
A red lid shining
with the word Jell-O
written all over it.
Lime, maybe darker,
the only color in the room.
A cold, cooling cup of green.
It sits on a white tray
atop a white sheet
on a white bed
on a white floor,
surrounded
by white walls.
The glowing green bleeds
into the air.
A glistening cup of gelatine.
It sits still. A sign of life
although it is untouched.
It looks delicious, perfect,
smooth,
in the window light.
But no one eats it.
Its last moments, stretched,
from no movement in the room.
Not even in the building
where things happen
too fast, too late, too soon.
And her hand with the white wristband
lays limp, asleep, beside it
with a spoon.
