Cradle to grave.

Cradle to grave.

Clean white walls

Square white rooms

Dark cells without light

Staccato breathing

Butterfly wings

Fluttering

Fluorescent streaming

Silent screaming

Devious dreaming

Half a day

Hollowed out

With memories

The other half

Filled with jelly

Strawberry sundae

On a Monday.

Ghosts wander freely

In surgical masks

Nobody wants

A plague doctor

Sunbeams lance through

Empty halls

Sterilised dust motes

Dance silently

In a rise and fall

There is little to see

In the aftermath

Of life or death

Babies wrapped tight in warm blankets

Strapped in

For a bumpy ride.

A storm passes

Keeping pace with the mood

Of the place

Nobody risks a second glance

Going back is coming from

There is no chance to complain

About the detail

Written in the fine margins

That escaped attention.

Matrons of honour

A dying breed

Carry on nurse

There are no doctors

In this house.

It was always meant

To be this way

Blind acceptance

Of the inevitable

Sufferance of consequence

Devil take the hindmost

Whatever that might mean

Life is always

A failure to prescribe

And death is never

An idle threat

An open grave

Far from here

Or over there

It’s all the same to me.