Last Orders

[71degrees]

Bare tapping toes
curled and eager for dance
spring me from the picnic table
across the warm shadow-slatted
beer-garden cobblestones
through rambunctiousness
to the back-bar hatch
where Adam or Ben provide
another blood-brown ale;
tart effervescent
liquid presence.

Tautened hamstrings
numbed by a bucket-seat
haul concrete feet
past walls of warnings
into the windowless office
where someone stranger MD
closes a yellowish folder
pockets a pen
and pronounces the diagnosis;
cirrhosis of the liver,
I blink then shiver.

Lead-lined lids shut
on senses dulled by a draft
seeping through my shoulder
inducing staged sleep in a room
of clicks, pumps, beeps
and blinding light
where twelve incise and reveal
to harvest a saviour
and sow then stitch
their presence within me;
amnesty granted,
humanity transplanted