Wasatch Range; Last Supper by Mira Goldstein

Wasatch Range

Mountains are flat,

outside my window

and the two dimensional brown

sits with cars and glass buildings,

misplaced on canvas.

In the day the sky is blank

and blue up top,

the way I made sense

of space and depth and death

as a child.

But in the early mornings

when I’ve grown tired of my

twin sized bed,

I sit against the diagonal wall

and the green screen casts

golden light in stripes

across my face.

Days here say a long time

is not forever.

Still I feel mountains

rolling in my throat

and a voice of daffodil

telling the nurses

that I will not die.

I am as bright as the golden

light but it is

not my voice

when I awake.

It is hard to speak here.

One of us swallowed something sharp

and his intestines worked like snakes.

The hexagon was pushed

through him as if he

ate a mouse, the dead little lump

moving down his body

with its pink tail in tow.

I am upset for the

mouse, it did no harm.

Still the serpent

opened its jaws and gulped,

the way I consume the mountains,

spitting out the cars and the glass

and salt.

Trees are so small at the peak

and they demand only

one eye to marvel at their bend.

My open window

is not all the way open,

the shades slant sideways

and the glass laughs,

seeing as thin stripes and

two dimensions are the

best I will get.

Last Supper

The plastic stuck to my face

till all I could see was blurred and

vague objects in my room.

Blurred and vague is how they always go.

I stood for a long time, looking down

from the third floor window.

I moved to the second window

where there was grass instead of concrete,

then I thought better of it,

and moved back.

I stood for a long time, looking down

from the first

then, I thought better of it

and shut the windowpane

leaving the black net of safety

propped against my neatly-made bed.

Clarity was what I sought,

yet each time I became

confused and afraid, a childish thing.

Almost as if I was re-reading the

Caution sign on the screen and

that crude little picture of the baby

crawling to its death.

The baby’s skull is broken and its

brains are falling onto the concrete

as I call the Samaritans who are supposed to be good.

I can’t remember what they told me,

but that night

I went to bed alive.

Curiosity with death is not

wanting to die. Walking to the train station

at 6 AM I say this. I want the rush

and the screeching and the oil smell

as an alarm clock. I am awake.

Markers of time are the moments

I tested myself, moments

which I have forgotten.

I held a knife and pressed it to my chest,

which I cannot remember.

It dug into my skin with only a dull

ache of force

and left my heart itchy as if I was

pierced by a mosquito.

I slid it sideways across my throat

as I watched my face in the mirror.

Silly me, a moon face.

The movies make it look so easy,

So it’s easier to not try.

I don’t put pressure.

I will wait it out like we all do.

I cannot do it.

The pills are so

pretty, like beads in a bottle.

I count them out in my palm

and take them with warm water.

The capsules stain my fingers with pink

as I cup and drink greedily.

The faucet is running,

background music of last moments.

I am full, but this is Last Supper.

I take them until I can’t anymore.

The colors are vivid and life

seems less ambiguous.

But now, there is plastic over my head,

and I can’t breathe.

I wish to shut the window

but I watch in slow motion as the baby teeter-totters out.

I am saying something now; I hear nothing.

No incoming train, no faucet.

The movies make it look so easy,

and now it is and I don’t want it to be.

Silly me.

I reach out to catch the baby

but she is hurtling towards the concrete,

and I took out the safety screen.

Dying should feel like living

but the darkness is a dream.

I go to bed alive,

I wake sleepy.

My eyes are filmy,

and I wish I thought better of it.

Blurred and vague is how I go.

Author Bio: Mira Goldstein is a 17-year-old poet who has lived her life half at home and half in hospitals. Her poetry stems from a yearning for life outside of white walls and the hopefulness that words and stories can change the greater hospital system. In her free time, Mira loves watching crime-TV documentaries, going on long runs by the Mystic Lakes, and reading YA romances to unwind.

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