bright eyes ...

bright eyes  ...   for my daughter who beat the odds and for all the children who didn't get to go home  in the cancer ward they dance like elves and fairies sprinkled with magic  some wearing  a cotton cap with the hospital logo on the side others not so self-conscious who come racing by with a strand of hair carving a jet stream through the antiseptic air like a flag flying high above the ramparts signalling in the rocket's red glare i am still present i am still here in this pyjama world no one is crying or even sighing in despair and certainly no one is praying or pleading to escape that one door out that exit to eternity that swings open every day because for now  theirs is the kingdom the power and the glory to dance and sing and laugh outrageously when  the scrubs i wear fall a little to starboard and reveal a serious crack that tarnishes my dignity but polishes their cheeks and noses  with bright colour as they roll and tumble  over beds on wheels  and moon one another in a parody  of my shattered dignity  only looking back to be sure that i am smiling too in the corners of the ward their mothers or their fathers and rarely both sit with steel faces and eyes of anguish eyes that sparkle only on cue and then drift away again and why not they have  been summoned as witnesses to  an execution almost as if this place steams with a stench from the hallways of Auschwitz and so they count time instead of living  in time Magritte of the Leukaemia League whispers in my ear and asks if i have a lover i turn to look into her  practised bedroom eyes nodding my head as i smile uncomfortably and she is emboldened  by my response and wonders aloud if  i make love every night stunned  i hesitate and in that split second of eternity her eyes ignite and  she squeals away  in a convulsion  of absolute pleasure  collapsing in her breathlessness into the arms of David of Team Teratoma  and she cups her hand over her mouth in the event that i might be a lip reader and murmurs in his ear something that giddies him into delirium and i laugh knowing what he knows until finally he finds his young hip his rock 'n' roll cool and walks over to me stumbling over puppy footsteps but wearing the smirk of a man four times his age until at last he hugs my knee and speaks to me  in a voice of whispers "I hope you have a nice baby a strong baby  with living blood and no tumours and many  many T cells so I can come by  to dance with her at her wedding when I am well" Copyright © Kennedy James, 2011. All rights reserved.