Watch Hour Dear / me dear / old me dear / Iowa hospital room / I left a / piece of myself still / attached / to the plastic IV / bag / sucking salt sodium chloride / up my veins / As I rambled / through the halls imagining my / cot ride not as chore or / weakness but / langor / The perks of paying top dollar 500 / a night / for my very own room with a TV and graham / crackers / Whatʻs funny is how experiences put things into / perspective / Itʻs not funny just / morbid / So ergo an hour / before the ER / visit there was a / class discussion I wasnʻt / paying / attention to instead wondering what / the / painting / that people make phone case notebooks of / was / the one with / a watch melting like butter over a / bedside table and / its twin / hanging over a branch / laundry set out to dry / and / then I was cold / not poetic / but I said that my / bones / were dry / ice and coursing through / them the veins was liquid nitrogen / I didnʻt know / two hours later I would be pancaked / across a cotton / cot like the watch in Daliʻs painting / The Persistence of Me / except this time this watchʻs time was / ticking as the / EMTs measured the coughs rasps / of beats and stuck / electrodes on the melting / butter / pale skin of my abdomen / silver IVs up my forearm / minute hands / I promise / I promised my dad on / the phone / en route to the Iowa hospital that I was / OK / fine / great / good but / you donʻt know you were near death until youʻre not / Watches hang from trees like / fruit / until / theyʻre on your father's wrist / Charlotte Hughes Charlotte Hughes is a high school junior in Columbia, South Carolina. She has attended the Iowa Young Writerʻs Studio, is an editor for Polyphony Lit and The Haloscope Review, and is the editor-in-chief of The Palette. You can find her poems in The Louisville Review and Duck Lake Journal.
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November 2023
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