She drifts on the white island
of a hospital bed.

Outside, the sun glitters hard
on a parking lot of cars.

Inside, another morning’s red sky.
By day, by night, the doctors

chart different courses,
another feast of IVs

from the nurses
each time I leave.

I hold her hand longer
then travel three hundred miles

home in slow,
mindless knots.

I clock in and out of sleep,
feel the worry drip

and walk the neighborhood early,
watching for signs. Today,

a dense quiet parts
around me, the stillness thick

after the night’s heavy rain, and then
a white hearse drives past.

It rounds the corner,
closed-mouthed. I drift on,

looking for the dead
in gutters, behind hedges. I almost beg

a siren’s wail
to claim the hearse for another.

But nothing. Only
overcast sky and this

invisible current
coursing through my body,

awaiting the call
that disorients

and sets me spinning,
the coordinates

of her, vanished,
gone missing.