The nursing shift changes at midnight. There are
only two
night nurses on the ward, older women, with white
elastic stockings.
Earlier in the day the other bed became empty. It is a
mechanism.
Perhaps like tides. The bed empties and the bed fills.
He is as he has been for days, the navel of the white
universe.
It is a mechanism. It consists of tubes and the
adjudicating screens.
About this time every night the universe begins its
slow
expansion. The walls open out, the ceiling fixture is
gulped up by a dark sky.
As the settling layer rises up through the night ocean
his consciousness lifts from the suddenly drenched
bedsheets
into a circle of constellations: Cancer, Scorpio, Boy
George.
All of his past bodies are silvered over by the thin
dusty light
against which stand Orion and his dogs, merciless,
waiting to accept him with naked stars for eyes.
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