Visiting Hours

The hospital at night

forgets it is a building.

It becomes corridor

and breath,

machines murmuring in patient intervals,

light diluted to a gentle hum.

I sit beside your bed

counting the rise and fall

of your ribs

as if they were tides

I could influence.

Your hand rests in mine —

cool, obedient,

veins threading blue beneath the skin

like unfinished handwriting.

Outside this room,

carts move softly over polished floors,

and somewhere a nurse laughs

with the restraint of someone

standing at the edge of grief too often.

We were never good

at saying what we meant

when it still mattered.

Instead, we perfected

smaller rituals —

cut fruit placed in bowls,

phones charged before sleep,

the careful folding of each other’s names

into ordinary sentences.

The hospital vending machine accepts exact change only.

Your eyelids tremble

as if chasing something

beyond fluorescent ceiling tiles.

I lean closer,

speak about the garden at home,

about how the jasmine

has climbed higher than the fence.

I do not tell you

how quiet the house has become

without your uneven footsteps.

The monitor insists

in green pulses.

Everything here measures

what is leaving

without ever announcing

when it has gone.

I watch your mouth

for movement

that could be goodbye,

or forgiveness,

or merely breath deciding

to return.

The corridor outside

holds its shape.

I sit still enough

to believe that stillness

might persuade you.

Love, I have learned,

sometimes shrinks

to the width of a plastic chair

and the space between heartbeats.

And the night keeps counting

even when we don’t.