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Random Coworker
By Lee Nelson
We were paired on a night shift.
Good Nurse.
Young.
Four hours of gunshot victim
punctuated with a K1 stretcher.
She was a keeper
but they never stay.
For all the frank blood
and senseless death
that night
(blood to the heels of our
disposable waders, our gowns and masks
and eye shields splattered like kids
in a paint ball battle)
we managed a lousy pizza
and about twenty minutes
of reality tv.
An iguana
a huge one
was lost and found in angry sea.
It hitched a choice less ride
with sympathetic enemies
back to the steamy stone
chase loungers of the shoreline
and a perfect sunset concluded
a rejoicing day
somewhere
on our volatile planet.
The difference of a minute
can be damned amazing.
Her eyes on that damn lizard.
They were ovals.
They egged down and
flanked her nose
to damn near her mouth.
It was the purest
rendering
of sympathy
I'd ever witnessed.
Involuntary.
Autonomic it was.
She gave me my first and only clue of
Mona Lisa?
"Picasso's Mona Lisa in sympathy?"
And it was hers
hers and only hers
and only a god could've decreed it.
Like I said
they never stay
(which probably makes me the damn fool)
so
whoever you are out there
Mister
because you must be
she'll take a lot of shit
from you
a lot
as this is always the way
with them
regardless of any
miraculous witness
and you'll never know
what you have
because I wouldn't either.
So have sense
some form of it
god dammit
at least enough of it
for whatever obligatory
ridiculousness she suffers
in your name as
sure as we are born
she will
and do not
fuck
it
up
for all the volatility
of woman and man
as bliss kisses terror
in our volatile world.
She's a keeper.
Know this.
You're welcome.
