Room 6

Morning, not fully formed.
The doors opened
I went in with the cane,
as though the body required
an explanation.

At the desk
they asked for my name.

I said it.
It sounded provisional.

Forms.
Address.
A space for payment.

I signed.

A month earlier
I had married.

Not because things were improving.
Because they were not.

We had been told
there was a possibility—
the word used carefully—
that the damage was not permanent.

That the body
had been misled.

They gave me something to drink.
Mint, they said.

I swallowed it.

Later, the machine.
White, enclosed.

“Music?”

I said yes.

Tchaikovsky began.
The machine answered.

I lay still,
thinking this is how it happens:
you agree not to move,
and gradually
you are removed.

After,
waiting.

A week.

My wife beside me
in the small room
that had no use for speech.

The doctor entered
with the images.

“It’s positive,” he said.

I felt
something settle.

Not relief.
Recognition.

He showed me
what was missing.

Then he said
he did not trust it.

Not entirely.

He spoke of removing the drugs.
All of them.

Slowly.

He said
it might return.

He did not say
what would happen if it did not.

After that
the body resisted.

There are ways
the body refuses absence.

Days without contour.
Nights that would not close.

In Greece,
wind coming off the water,
I let the last pills go.

No witness.

Months later
the trembling stopped.

The second scan
was different.

What had been dim
was visible again.

I stood
without thinking about it.

I wrote
a sentence
that did not break.

It is not correct
to say I was healed.

Something was restored.

Someone called my name.

I answered.