Ellen DonaghyHanging Frog
I lie back on the table, feel the stirrups,
bare butt crinkling the hygienic paper
and stare up at the green stuffed frog
watching me from the stark white ceiling
and smiling, as if we have become friends
after all these months. He watched
while I gradually lost weight,
smiled as the doctors poked at me,
ran endless tests, and refused
to say the word for what was wrong
while I was in the room. We both
listened to them whispering
outside the exam room, arguing with
test results and diagnoses. And the frog
never stopped swaying on his string
and grinning down at me as months
stretched into a year or more,
and all other possible afflictions and infections
fell away, leaving just the three of us:
me, the frog, and the cancer.
Trying to Sleep
Some nights I lie awake and wonder
if the dark in my room is darker
than the dark behind my eyelids.
I close my eyes and reopen them,
comparing the quality of the darks
but remaining uncertain. Perhaps
neither is darker, making the matter
of open and closed eyelids
inessential to the sleeping process,
but an option, like the cruise control
in my car, which is also similar to simply
closing my eyes and going to sleep,
in that it doesn’t work either.