Hospital

The smell of mourning combs my nostrils
as I wander around the dimly-litted halls.
I can almost taste the raging dispair
and hear the heartbreak, the loss, the fading,
the dying.
Right in front of me, a stretcher awaits
to send my pour soul into Heaven or Hell,
and what surrounds me now can drive one mad:
the call of many fragile bodies
to come to a better, forgotten place.
No one here is walking out the same.
(that is, if they walk out at all)
for this place seeps into a mind,
worming its way into every creak and crevice
until it forces you to go back inside,
worse off than you were before.
I am afraid now to even cross the corner,
for fear of seeing Death, in all his glory,
reaching out with his bony arm
to suck one more soul
(is it room 1-B, 2-A, or 3-C?)
into an ever-deepening, consuming abyss.


~J.V.Harker~
~30 June 2008~