Bedside

‘Cancer was named for the crab, because a cancer

tumour sends claws out into the surrounding tissue.’

      from Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie

More plaster of Paris than waxed alabaster, my mother, entombed in a hospital bed:

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her stone-cold effigy. Not death but dying, a greying out; colour enclaving to her nails.

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The passata of blood in the bag above her, drip, drip, drip into the clear, acrylic vein,

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while in the corridor, normality – Status Quo, rocking all over the ward. Inside her,

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pincers, reaching in hugs. They will tell me later she’s stable. Later still, they did all they could.