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Dan O'BrienJune 15, 2020

I fed you. You wore your helmet of ice. And mask of ice. Only a mouth
opening. Mittens, slippers. Of ice. Electric blanket to maintain
homeostasis. Tubes seeding your blood with the molecules that scour.
Piece by piece. And read to you, afraid of my voice, while around us
the rude populations were moaning, weeping, begging behind curtains.
I didn’t want to be here; yet I came back. I had no choice. And this time
you fed me.

Dan O'Brien

Dan O’Brien is a playwright and poet based in Los Angeles. His fourth poetry collection, Our Cancers, and a collection of his essays on playwriting, Of Time and the Theatre, will be published in 2021. This poem is from Survivor’s Notebook, a work in progress. His work can be found at www.danobrien.org.

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