FALL RISK IN ROOM 107

Think of my spine as a string of plums:
twenty round, one blistered

or as a boxed-up cake
you snapped into the backseat

or as a series of bones and discs, shivering
hot on the image machine.

At midnight, pearlish light cuts
the hospital drapes. The hallway

is my moon, a telescope away.
I consider asking the one woman doctor

to pluck me up with tongs and shake me
so that I might sweat out the gravity.

Post-op, she will repeat
the word rongeur, while I imagine camellias

blooming incidentally
over my body’s lessening.