When my grandfather was dying
in the hospital, a surgeon
stuck a tube in his back, vacuumed
out the extra fluid in his lungs, laughed
with the nurse about golf and football
while my grandfather screamed,
then sobbed, then breathed in crackling gusts
like dry branches catching fire.

The surgeon followed me into the hall,
pulled down his mask and said
Your grandfather is overreacting about the pain.
I was overreacting about the pain.
He was not going to be critiqued
by somebody who’d never held
a scalpel. It was not his fault
an old man was dying loudly.

Last year, a doctor walked into my
exam room, flanked by two lovely
nursing students. He didn’t look up,
just flipped through the pages on his clipboard.
Made a joke about the cyst on my tailbone.
The women smiled, but I couldn’t breathe
or walk anymore, red-hot darts down my legs.
The infection already in my blood.

I sit in a waiting room as my daughter
wakes up from surgery. I am not allowed
back, not yet. Not until I have lightened
up, relaxed, until she is better and I
no longer demand the doctor’s care. It’s unbearable
to love in a hospital waiting room. To witness,
to hear and hold every punchline. Imagine,
laughing while the trees beside you burn.