In the Blue Rooms

When I was in the hospital
Long white sheets of paper lay on bedside tables,
Crayoned black with lines.
Nails had etched and planed away the overdrawn, ordered places.
Tight hands folded them like unsound paper planes.
They flew in circles in the dark.
They twirled like dust devils in the park,
Crazed birds caught in trees. Hail to the untamed!
In the blue rooms there were no stars to fill the sky.
Doctors told what things had and had not been.
They would not unbar their minds.
Crayoned lines, the flights of sheets they would not see.
And I, I opened heavy hands to the dark,
Where shadows fall like crows at night, unseen.


—Eric Nelson