Nadira

Blood
It smells like blood
It smells like fucking blood
In here

Warm flesh and cold fluorescents
Tangled wires and dangling drip bags
Fire-red hair in the blue light
In the blue light

These shrivelled, sweatsoaked sheets
Slumped over the mattress edge
A Siberian divide

And these fingers
These clammy, feeble fingers
Wriggling frantically in the dark
O these fingers
These wretched little fingers
They tremble before you

Say something
Say anything

Our hope is fragile
And we cling to it
Like filthy bedsheets
Like the last brittle leaves of winter
Thrashed about in the frost
Like the pages of an open book
Clutched to your chest
Even as they tear and fall away

Dark arms reach skyward
With bone white fingers