But I do come to Trillium. To the Cardiac
Short Stay Unit where you’ve been sent for the second stent,
where free sanitizer prevents the spread of panic.
We laugh. Everyone is half-naked in I-See-U.

Behind a grey curtain, a thump and quiet invoke
Code Blue. We uncover your bottom line, the Left Main
of a black-and-white heart, hand-drawn, and the occlusion
coloured in about 80 percent with a blue pen

by the cardiologist who speaks of fine mesh tubes,
“flexible, supportive, capable of expansion,
biocompatible,” and of small and large balloons.
I think rubber, but it will be metal or fabric.

Code Red shuts down elevators, even when it’s just
a computer screen at the nurse station giving off
smoke. Smoke. Mother, you think of everything. See my
room, beside sewing machine, pink one, which signifies

the sari for the funeral, gold coins in the bank.
You won’t be noted for lack of effort, for cruelty,
or deforestation. You’ve never tasted red meat.
I’ll wear your rabbit-fur and watch the Brazilian

Forest Code green future landscapes, and you’ll be happy
I came. That it’s all spoken for now (for when). On May’s
verge, I decode what’s become of White—violent
patients, perennial, narrowing the running trail.

How things won’t be contained. Arrival of disorder
in a burst or its opposite. Gagar me sagar.
The sea in an earthen pot. Your approval of our new house
based solely on the grandness of its entrance.

This appeared in the March 2016 issue.

Madhur Anand

Madhur Anand is the author of the book of poems A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes and the memoir-in-halves This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart, both published by Penguin Random House Canada. She is a professor of ecology and sustainability at the University of Guelph, where she was appointed the inaugural director of the Guelph Institute for Environmental Research. She is also a member of the Educational Review Committee at The Walrus.