A Hospital Story

She took a large sheet of white paper and on this
she made the world a hospital with rows of beds
and corridors and she painted two nurses running
between the patients and a doctor in a floppy white coat
walking with a stethoscope that looked like a gun
towards a child with a monkey toy and to fill in the gaps
a mother holding a baby. She worked all day,
went to MacDonalds with her Gran, this was Saturday,
on Sunday she put in more beds in the hospital and a fat man
in a wheelchair next to a great big guide dog and a woman
with a white stick. In the open window she drew a blue sky
with a green-feathered pigeon , made a smudge on the wings
and drowned the blue flowers on the table with the rest of the green.
She put Grandma and Grandad on chairs by the table and roses
on the bed of her mother, even Barney the cat by her feet
and in the left corner smiling Paul the postman on his bicycle
that would squeak, when he put the brakes on and the kind police woman
in the top right corner, who gave her a sweet when she asked
what daddy had done to mummy after he shot her
and what did he do with the gun and then she got the bus with Grandad
to the police station to hand it in and the policeman at the desk said:
thank you, Gemma. That looks very pretty.