A hospital is a heart without blood, arteries swept
scalpel-clean. Only the white blood cells scurry through,
the proudest warriors, no room for red or blue. We sit
in the waiting room, time etherized and cut open, all the
springs and plugs will be fixed. Try to make sure the clock
keeps on ticking. We stare at the whitewashed walls before us —
all colors together, or the absence of color? Make a list
of things that are white: snow, communion wafers, well-cared-for
teeth. Poisonous mushrooms, the berries you're not supposed to eat.
Black/blue always, red sometimes, white never. That's the rule
you made me remember; that's the way to survive in the woods.
But what if white is the only thing you can find, if all
the other berries are plucked, if all the other trees are dead?
We sit here in this world without color, this sterile, bloodless
heart, praying that nature might make some exception, that just
this once you might eat white and live.

Jeannine M. Pitas is a writer and teacher from Buffalo, NY.