Ex Voto

Ex Voto

You have to go into a side room,
Past the uncertainty that you’re allowed to,
To see them. Plaster casts sawed away
From the leg or arm they kept the bones
Of touching like wires to jumpstart the healing.
Back braces narrow as Victorian bodices,
The plastic the ugly medical color of vomit,
With yellowed straps dangling from rusted clips
That remind you of the straps of old 
Shoulder pads with plastic, scalloped flaps.
Crutches with pink rubber stoppers
At their ends to keep the rodent gravel
From gnawing them. Seatbelts that saved
Their lives but not their spines, 
Frayed where they were cut away.
In the corner, wheelchairs, their wheels
Like the hunched-up shoulders of buzzards
In a tree waiting for something to die.
Glasses with darkened lenses
Like those used to view eclipses.
Hearing aids small and strange as sweetbreads. 
But, mostly, the framed baby clothes,
Lace onesies, paired shoes that would feel
Snug on a thumb, all of which belonged
To babies born with holes in their hearts,
Or with cancer that began feeding on them
Before they were even out of the womb,
None of whom were given a chance
By doctors who told their wives 
It would have been better had they never been born.
They shook their heads when they heard
One of the sympathetic nurses say
They were taking the baby to the painting
Of the Virgin at Ta’ Pinu, which had spoken
To a farmer's daughter in 1883
And told her to say three Hail Mary's,
One for each of the three days she lay
In the tomb. Of course it worked, otherwise
The clothes wouldn’t be here, nor 
The hearing aids, glasses, wheelchairs, 
Seatbelts, crutches, braces, casts.
You don’t have to believe, but you have to
Believe that there are people who've believed.