RogueAgent

Liz Ahl

THE OTHER ROOM

The hospital gown that will fit you is always
in the other room, and the nurse knows,
and goes to get it once she sees your body
and remembers how the gown she knows won't fit
is the only gown folded and waiting in the room
to which your body's been sent. Somehow the gown
for you is always in the room you're never sent to.
This room's always expecting someone else, ready
for any body but yours. The room you're sent to
isn't for you. Each day, it sometimes seems,
another unspoken reminder that your unspeakable body
should be elsewhere or otherwise. The pants that fit
are in the expensive specialty catalog, not on the rack
or hung on the door of the department store fitting room,
or at the funky thrift. And they don't exactly fit.
The kind February offer of a coat that would never fit you
stings like unkindness. The group has t-shirts made
and gives you one you'll never wear because it doesn't fit.
They'll wonder why you never wear the shirt                   
they gave to everybody in the group
and which everybody wears except for you.
Or they won't wonder. Either way, you're given a t-shirt.
You don’t pitch a fit. You’re given a gown
from the other room so there will be room in it
for your body. Given each day a small reminder
that there is no room
for you.

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