Last Orders

[tomoffing]

Edit 1

Bare curled toes,
primed and eager for dance,
lift me from the picnic table
across warm cobblestones
to the back-bar hatch.
Adam stops, mid-flow,
and nods to acknowledge
my need for another.
"I'll get that one brother."
he offers, pouring and presenting
a tall blonde pale ale;
I lip-smack and sup
tart effervescent
liquid presence.

Tautened hamstrings,
numb from shifting
while waiting,
haul concrete feet
past walls of warnings
into the windowless office
of someone stranger MD.
They close a jaundiced folder
meet my pleading eyes
with cold compassion
and deliver their diagnosis;
"Cirrhosis of the liver."
I blink. Then shiver.

Lead-lined lids shut
on senses dulled by a draft
seeping through my shoulder
inducing staged sleep
in a two-bed theatre
of clicks, pumps, beeps
and a blinding light,
where twelve custodians of life
incise and harvest
a cadaveric saviour
to sow their presence within me;
humanity transplanted,
amnesty granted.


Original

Bare tapping toes
curled and eager for dance
spring me from the picnic table
across the warm shadow-slatted
beer-garden cobblestones
through rambunctiousness
to the back-bar hatch
where Adam or Ben provide
another blood-brown ale;
tart effervescent
liquid presence.

Tautened hamstrings
numbed by a bucket-seat
haul concrete feet
past walls of warnings
into the windowless office
where someone stranger MD
closes a yellowish folder
pockets a pen
and pronounces the diagnosis;
cirrhosis of the liver,
I blink then shiver.

Lead-lined lids shut
on senses dulled by a draft
seeping through my shoulder
inducing staged sleep in a room
of clicks, pumps, beeps
and blinding light
where twelve incise and reveal
to harvest a saviour
and sow then stitch
their presence within me;
amnesty granted,
humanity transplanted