Plainsong for a daughter III

In the ward again, at fifteen, then sixteen she lies frozen. At tilt with her world this arrival again, bleached with trauma. She ghosts into the opiating realms of unexplained fevers. Notice among the alleys of drips, hooked to beds or wheelchairs the complex faces of parents with their damaged children. At the Royal Children’s Hospital Parkville, what might divide us, distinctively in the cumulous gift of living. She is strange colours, hosted by angels undoubtedly. They patter here, yet darkly to wrestle and reckon young mortalities. Tested are the doctors’ reasons. She sleeps for days, in this clock-time perversion. My own attention, edged lucid, prayer shaped to her breathing.