Hospital Room Olympics

Hospital Room Olympics

The room's a tangle of life's thin tendrils,

Jellyfish tendrils, pulsing silent in the sterile sea.

A cord for food that never tastes of home,

A screen where chefs dance, flavor lost in lights.

A lifeline squeezing flesh and hope around frail bones,

Veins sipping from a plastic vine, skin mottled, almost done.

You, tethered dreamer, and I, weaver of woolen threads,

Spy on knife-flashing, pan-clattering mirages

As you drift and bob in pharmaceutical tides.

You move—a careful choreography of convalescence,

Steps counted like a stone-skipping child's game.

Each stride, a tiny triumph; each breath, a score kept.

This is no Greek contest—no olive wreaths or victors' songs,

Only the shuffling feet of the newly brave,

Flannel-clad gladiators in slow-motion combat.

We peer outside, note the sun's surrender,

As the room turns goldfish bowl—

Five shuffling paces mark today's victory lap,

The podium, a bed to which you retreat.