Suzanne Burrows
The Garden of Dreams
They were named by their disease.
She was the Polio, next to Arthritis, one up from Rickets.
Get the Polio out of bed, was the greeting each morning.
Rickets for bath.
How 's the little Hydrocephalus? asked the Doctor,
turning the screw that tapped the water of the brain.
Poorly, said Sister, catching the fluid;
pale pink it was, water and blood.
She became the anonymous lost evacuee,
tagged by the finder.
Fighting each crisis of breath
with the names of saints.
Chrisogonus and Euphemia.
The litanies she'd sung with her father;
she'd get her tongue around them.
Each child was a saint for a day,
then wheeled away under the sheets.
Nurses passed like sails;
their caps and aprons full of air.
To them they were Little Stinkers,
not children falling as leaves.
Morituri le salutant, some wag had written.
Pinned it up.
They should have had it taped around their heads;
bandaged phylactenes, precious little purses
to keep their names in.
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