Do you want to get well?

He had spent a lifetime, it seemed,

in and out of hospitals, but mostly in. The halls

his normal walking route. The Great Room his Getaway.

The windows opaque, used now as mirrors

for when the nurses came in to change the bandages

and he watched over their shoulder while

lying on his side, thinking for all that might be outside

the window, these walls, the gray Hospital—

it would never be as simple, delineated as his life

as Patient. Did he want to get well?

What a question.