“
The Nursing Home
This Sunday, I paid a visit to a nursing home and noticed
the empty bed in the room adjacent to my mom's.
Crisp sheets stood proxy for where her elderly neighbor lay,
an unshaven man or a woman with whiskers, I forget which,
when I visited last ~ it couldn't have been a month, two at the most.
The empty bed's corners were meticulously tucked in,
like an army recruit's at boot camp,
bleached of any possible embarrassment.
After countless episodes of CSI,
I cannot hear the word 'bleach'
without thinking of incriminating evidence linking a victim to a killer.
You must admit an empty bed at a nursing home is creepy;
every empty room seems a trap,
every lackadaisical nurse an accessory to murder,
every administrator a potential Adolf Eichmann
facilitating a program of geriatric genocide...
Shit, I forgot to validate my parking.
"Mom, I'll be right back," I say, with a smile,
closing the room with the empty bed,
bleaching my head
of any possible embarrassment.
”
”