Small Things
In the end we carried what was left of your things
In a bag marked PATIENTS PROPERTY
I was not surprised they gave you no apostrophe
On that plain brown bag with those thick black letters
because
within hours of knowing your last dream
you’d lost your name, your rank and your belonging
and everyone who noticed that bag marked
PATIENTS PROPERTY
(an apostrophe would have been something)
walk through the ward, down ten flights
through the lobby to the car park
knew you had been stripped.
A simple space for Isabel Cecily
on the plain brown bag
would have saved all that
In the end ... small things ... are huge.
