The Children's Hospital

The Children’s Hospital

The architecture should be cheery.
The outside should look like something
To be climbed, even if climbing is
Strictly forbidden here. The main foyer
Should be large and bright
With many greeters greeting
Parents — both parents, often — and the child
To ask if they know where they’re going.
They know where they’re going.
It should be a playroom not a waiting room
Where they wait, an abundance of toys,
Where the boy with the bald head
With blue veins throbbing in skin thin
And white as the tissue paper expensive
Pears come wrapped in
Plays with the girl who will be
Blind within the year. He helps guide her
Hand to the train, which their hands
Ride together until they collapse laughing
At the derailing, laughter that makes
Worried mothers wince. One too
Sick to play stares glassily from her mother’s lap
As her mother runs her hand through her hair.
Weeks after, she will find one snagged
In the brass clasp that holds the huge
Faceted diamond her husband knelt
As if from its weight to offer her.
Visible only when she holds it up to the light, 
The hair goes in the chinaware dish
That clatters whenever she walks near it
With the plastic golden diadem,
The baby teeth tiny as beet seeds,
The drawing of the hospital her daughter
Made for her one morning while she was
Talking to the doctor desperately about hope.