We shake hands all around, the white-coats with their charts and stethoscopes who saved you. And now you trot along beside us out the door. Not the same as always, not unscathed. Maybe not as good. Her hands are on the steering but the way her mouth brakes at the corner, you can tell she didn't want to be westbound on this interstate, her Suburban bearing her farther into mid-week.
Windshield wipers click a tempo under wet unlaundered sky.
And now in the slow lane exiting, her kids are crying, she's flicking signals with such urgent hands, you know she didn't mean to get off here. Out here, littered notes and measures tramped on snow by people with business counting calendar, not a one of them singing. Fresh fallen snow already dirty on the street, unshriven, freezing again by evening. However well you listen, still you might not hear the least amoeba going about its business of life, the multitude of worms coiling blind through soil, the underground spaghetti of roots reaching to interlace without one word. Wings are gone.