The Pale

A healthy girl, I walked past
a string of coffee and sandwich shops
where patients, instead of people, sat
in dressing gowns, bandages,
plaster casts and pale faces.

They’d slipper on down to the pale point
from their hospital wards, to enjoy
the same caffeine fix as their rushing
counterparts, and to watch the busy London
streets, full of the pink cheeked public.

A couple of days later,
I was one of “them” – pale, bandaged,
my arse hanging out of a gown.
Meanwhile, my mum’s friend shakin’ that ass
in front of doctors with white coats.

They told me to go for a walk.
I managed to shuffle like a zombie
clutching an asda bag with
my two bosom shaped drains, down to
the congregation point of the pale.

I was the first of my kind, and
the nurses weren’t sure how to extract
the drains. I lay there, sweating like
a teenage mum, panting to give birth.
Tears, and pain-induced sweat drenched the pale sheets.

That was when they got me
high. My tears turned to laughter,
and pain to numbness. A drain
let out a huge fart as it came out,
and I was hysterical. Peace, man!

My bandages weren’t visible,
but it didn’t matter. We used to
call them the scaffolding, they were
so strong. They’d wrapped it round me
as though I were a chestless mummy.

I don’t know what they used, but
it didn’t help the scaffolding much.
A puke yellow, but it peeled off
into my hand, into clear plastic balls,
like the glue that newspapers use.

Then came the day I left the pale behind,
along with all the inedible food.
On the way home, each speed bump
killed me a little, but you
have to get worse to get better.

I’d left it all behind, but
the scaffolding stayed a while –
I grew quite attached, really.
Though, in the end, the coming off of the scaffolding
meant the blossoming of the girl.