Children’s Hospital, 2011

On the fifth sleepless night
I scavenged drawers of bedside
table hoping for a dog-eared magazine
or hospital pamphlet, depending
on at least a navy blue Bible
                                                     placed by THE GIDEONS

Nesting with dust bunnies and foreign strands
of hair, beneath the uncracked spine of New Testament,
was a phone book
                                        Greater Lexington Area

The cover was filmy and smudged like cabinets
in a well-used kitchen. I thumbed pages, house numbers,
fences I’d hopped, the names of friends’ fathers–
those trellises that splintered under the awkward vines
of their daughters’ growth.

An IV pump droned
through stale night noise. Your mouth
the color of bruised peach. I was thankful
for something though I wasn’t
sure what.