boys on one side
girls on the other
we breathed in rhythm
at night to the iron lung
that held the boy on his back
whose face could only be seen
through the mirror above him
brave and afraid
we were soldiers –
our street clothes
missing, our little lives given over
to the alien tongues
of hospital staff
the polished metal
of gurneys and
pitchers of cold water
the windows
so far above our heads
we could only guess
what was outside
and inside
I never walked down to that end,
to the forgotten boy,
in that metal tube
I never looked into,
afraid of that foreign country
and what I might see there
in the mirror.