Do Not Resuscitate By Marissa Glover

    wakingphotolife: Flickr CC


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DO NOT RESUSCITATE

I wonder
how you’d recognize yourself
how you’d reenter the right body    
if we’d given different orders—
let the machines bring you back from the light.
Would you float down each corridor checking rooms,
a ghost looking for the shell you once called home?
You’ve never seen your face, not really,
only a reflection in mirrors or water or glass.

How do you know who you are?

You’d pass by waiting rooms packed
with anxious visitors praying.
Skip the man you guess is about your age
because grieving friends and family
surround his empty frame.

You’d search for the room with only one bed—
a nurse unplugging equipment
a body tagged at the toe
a room absent of everyone
who might have known you but couldn’t.

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Marissa Glover teaches and writes in central Florida, where she spends most of her time sweating. Her poetry has been published at Four Ties Lit Review, The Furious Gazelle, Rose Quartz Journal, and Picaroon Poetry, among others—and is forthcoming from Collective Unrest and The Cabinet of Heed. Follow her on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_.

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