A nurse slides between the heavy curtains at your bedside holding two grape popsicles—one already unwrapped—a thick plum spear with a crystal-coated base dripping onto the pale fist below. Too propofol-laden to lift your arms, you watch the nurse pull a stool up to your bed and thrust the treat ice-end out. You raise an eyebrow as if to say seriously? To which the nurse replies I thought your throat might hurt. Obviously, it does, intubation is a bitch. So, you nod. He rests the popsicle on your lower lip where synthetic grape cements and smooths your ventilator-chafed skin. You don’t like the flavor, but you open your mouth anyways, and invite the ice to rest atop your tongue. Oh. Sweetness heavy as codeine coats your teeth, gums, cheeks, throat. The treat is menthol-cool, slick as summer sweat rolling down your neck, and it purples your mouth like a bruise. You close your eyes and all you know is popsicle—balmy juice thick as blood and sugary enough to sing in your teeth. You do not know that in four weeks you will come back to this hospital, take the elevator to the 5th floor, listen to a new doctor explain CRPS, tibial nerve damage, and chronic pain. You do not care that in a few hours, some underpaid aid will wheel you to your father’s car to doze on the drive home. Nothing matters besides the first popsicle in your nurse’s hand and the second one he’s yet to unwrap.
All suffering melts
in the honeyed violet glow
of a popsicle.
