Intensive Care Unit

In one corner of the ward somebody was eating a raw chicken. The cheerful nurses did not see. With the tube down my throat I could not tell them. Nor did they notice the horror show on the TV set suspended over my windowless bed. The screen was dead but a torn face was clear. I did not see my own in a mirror for weeks. When it happened, when I dared to face my face after the ravaging, it was not mine but something whittled, honed down to a sly resemblance. It, even the mirror, the pale room, the oxygen tank neat and black as a bomb in its portable crate— all was hallucination. But the bloody rooster, the stray pieces of bodies slung into dreamless nooks, the white-haired doll whimpering on a gift counter— those were real. I keep living there. Foolish. I am home. Half safe.