Just Out of Reach
Poem: Manifestations of Grief "You come back every day and leave pieces of yourself behind."
Mar 18, 2026 · 2 min read
Just Out of Reach
“Why are there so many of them?” she screamed.
But there was no answer.
Only the sound of coughing,
Wet and endless.
Ceiling tiles blinked in
Flickering codes,
And the floor whispering underfoot
Like skin stretched to its limit.
They came from the corners,
Not quickly, but like mold,
Creeping from IV drips
And unattended beds,
Trailing cold
Through places
Warmth had abandoned.
The hospital walls were
Jaundiced and skeletal,
Its silence thick and
Institutional,
A silence shaped by
Everything it had
Witnessed
And never laid to rest.
Her name echoed,
Down
The
Corridor,
But no mouth spoke it.
Just a wheeze from the vents,
Like a breath that
that couldn’t exhale.
They wore visitor badges
Like shackles of hope and
paper covers clinging to their shoes,
peeling against the linoleum.
With each step they advanced
Towards her,
Faces like nurses,
And pupils split open
And weeping.
Every room was the same,
Sterile, blinding.
In one there came
A scream like a crow
Caught mid throat from a face
In white sheets and machines
Murmured in a language
That haunts the ghosts
Of this place.
Another nurse turned
Its head
All the way around
And said,
"You’ve been here before, haven’t you?"
"You come back every day and leave pieces of yourself behind."
"We’ve been building you."
She backed away,
But her feet sank into the faded tile,
Years of sorrow ground into its pores.
The walls began to peel
time sloughing off in strips,
And she saw
Her own reflection
In the defibrillator case,
Smiling and eyeless.
The intercom clicked.
A voice crowed and cawed.
Then static and the sound of breath
Held until it burned.
They gathered now,
Draped in their grief,
Stitched from waiting rooms and
Hallway prayers crushed
In clenched fists.
And somewhere,
Down
The
Long
Fluorescent spine of the ward,
A monitor flatlined in time
With her fear.
She screamed again,
But the hospital swallowed it,
The way it had swallowed
Countless others before.
The lights kept humming,
Flickering codes to,
The room, just out of reach.
By: Heather Patton / Verdant Butterfly
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2026 Heather Patton · The Verdant Butterfly
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