A Time to Dance(11)

            vomit.

            “Don’t look,” Uday anna cries, laying a hand across my eyes.

            Through his fingers I see

            shredded skin, misshapen muscles. Mine.

            Feel sticky blood pooling

            below my right knee.


Pain swings me away.


The stench of burnt rubber.

            Flashing lights. The hysterical wail of an ambulance.

            Garbled voices.

            Cold. Mangled sounds made by masked figures.

            Darkness.





WAKING





Each breath is an effort.

            Every part of my body aches.

            The air stinks of ammonia.


I push my heavy eyelids open.

            Above me

            patches of paint peel off the ceiling.

            Bandages scratch at my skin.

            An IV tube sticks into my left arm.

            I struggle to sit up.

            “Let me do that for you. Lie back.”

            A nurse

            starts cranking up the back of my

            hospital bed.


Against the wall, Ma sits dozing.

            Beyond Ma, a glint of steel—

            a wheelchair.

            Fear slices through my dull brain.

            No. The wheelchair

            cannot be mine.

            I see an ugly bulge under the sheet covering my legs.

            Yank off the sheet with what’s left

            of my strength.

            My right leg ends

            in a bandage.

            Foot, ankle, and nearly half of my calf,

            gone.

            Chopped

            right off.


“No!” The nurse pulls my sheet

            back over the leftover

            bit of my right leg.

            But I still see the

            nothingness

            below my right knee.


Ma jerks

            awake,

            leaps up from her chair,

            runs toward me.

            Her eyes scared as a child’s,

            she clutches the metal rail

            of my hospital bed.

            “I’m so sorry,” she says.

            “About

            everything.”


I turn my face away from Ma,

            away from the cold metal gleam of the wheelchair

            in this puke-green hospital ward.


Outside the window, I see the gnarled trunk

            of a huge banyan tree.

            Its thick branches sprout roots that hang down

            shaggy as Shiva’s hair.