The A/C Unit Broke in My Hospital Room

after Dylan Thomas, “I See the Boys of Summer”

Lucy Jones

Nowadays, the mornings writhe out stuttering movements	                 wasps twitching there 

in their own honey. 		  The drugs wake me lackadaisical from 

every dream;                they all end with me dying. 	                       Chasing themselves to their 

own end                        the slow molasses murmur of a sickly heart. 


Sometimes I feel very old         when the spasms of the overhead light, the 

coughing bulb,                          blinks in morse code              and the word it spells is dogdayed 

and the whole room holds its breath. Every noise that wakes me is the reluctant pulse 

of the child next door              a whine           wires keep alive, and not even of 


her own volition.          It’s hot.              Each visitor sweats, a clicking tongue.         Still, love 

is all I think about.      Dreaming doesn’t help, I’m the devil’s advocate, I raise my hand and 

everyone groans a collective plea                  for silence, please.                Even when I light 

up in every hotbed of tissue,               in trays of pills, neon gummy-vitamin colorbursts. 


When the window is open          I cannot stop slapping the mosquitoes sucking out the fever in 

my veins.                       Dead, they leave behind splays of small black strings:                        
their 

legs plastered on my arm.        Dead, they unswallow a portion of my blood from their throats. 

Lucy Jones is a senior English/ French double major from Memphis, TN.