You Are Not Going to Come Trillium

But I do come to Trillium. To the Cardiac

Short Stay Unit where you’ve been sent for the second stent,

where free sanitizer prevents the spread of panic.

We laugh. Everyone is half-naked in I-See-U.

Behind a grey curtain, a thump and quiet invoke

Code Blue. We uncover your bottom line, the Left Main

of a black-and-white heart, hand-drawn, and the occlusion

coloured in about 80 percent with a blue pen

by the cardiologist who speaks of fine mesh tubes,

“flexible, supportive, capable of expansion,

biocompatible,” and of small and large balloons.

I think rubber, but it will be metal or fabric.

Code Red shuts down elevators, even when it’s just

a computer screen at the nurse station giving off

smoke. Smoke. Mother, you think of everything. See my

room, beside sewing machine, pink one, which signifies

the sari for the funeral, gold coins in the bank.

You won’t be noted for lack of effort, for cruelty,

or deforestation. You’ve never tasted red meat.

I’ll wear your rabbit-fur and watch the Brazilian

Forest Code green future landscapes, and you’ll be happy

I came. That it’s all spoken for now (for when). On May’s

verge, I decode what’s become of White — violent

patients, perennial, narrowing the running trail.

How things won’t be contained. Arrival of disorder

in a burst or its opposite. Gagar me sagar.

The sea in an earthen pot. Your approval of our new house

based solely on the grandness of its entrance.

 

Bibliographical info

Madhur Anand’s “You Are Not Going to Come Trillium” first appeared in the March 2016 issue of The Walrus, selected by Poetry In Voice Creative Director Damian Rogers in her role as poetry editor there.

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