On Exiting Universitätsspital Zürich, New Year’s Eve 2015

Charif Shanahan

The open air had the predictable sparkle

After two months not only indoors

But flat on my back, waiting, mostly,

For the neck they kept cutting open to heal

So that when they wheeled me out through double

Doors and the tram passed across my field

Of view and the scattered strangers flecked

The white blur my eyes made

Like floaters after a long sleep, I felt,

Sudden in my plexus, the exact angle of loss

I had lived with when I lived here

As though it had waited for me to return so as

To enter me again, as though I had not

Lived four years without it, elsewhere, where

They say life is, regardless of where you are,

So that as the bells of the Fraumünster rang

From inside the steeples, the tail

Of the lake stretching out of view between

The hills on either side, I became,

As an actor becomes, animated, populated by

Someone else’s feelings, someone else’s spirit—

And now, a few years later still, I know

To ask if this complex of feeling, deep-frozen,

Waiting for me, was my actual life—

Not a portion of the life, not

A possible life, but my tangled and patient

Actual implausible resilient fucked-up life?