Medicinal Lullaby My life is a melody with a single note, a repetition palpitated every other beat. I haven’t breathed on my own since they brought me here. They feed me through my arm, and when my body refuses to hold it any longer they clean up my messes. My world is bathed in a soft, blue light, wrapping my reality in a flowing, silken aura. I’ve been speaking since the accident, but it was only this morning I realized they couldn’t hear me. My existence is soaked in latent medical smells, nascent almost-scents of the world away from this sea of sterile greens and whites. The night nurse smells so faintly of lilacs, and I envision her as youthful and beautiful, but her coarse, plump fingers defy my fantasy even as they lovingly attend to me. I don’t have the heart to open my eyes and see. My soul feels like dragonfly bites, the first true sensation since the windshield shattered my face. Fingers dance aerobically across me in ineffectual massage. A low drumbeat rolls, a yawn in the air sucks me in and all the busyness below tastes like forced poetry as I let my breath go.