You are eight years old when you fall into a coma. 70 years later, you unexpectedly awaken, a child in an elderly person’s body. Your parents are dead, and your relatives are nowhere to be found. Your only friend is the nurse who has watched over you for the last 30 years of her career.
It’s stupid how you wake up
music is playing somewhere and you remember that it’s the ice cream truck and your eyes
flutter open and see a white room
a cascade of vague colors and
your eyes are so tired
your tongue is so stiff and your throat is so dry
you look around slowly and your neck aches and
you recognize the white walls of the hospital
and you must be sick.
there’s a woman at the corner and she’s reading a book and she starts as
who is she
she looks like your aunt but
what did you aunt even look like the memory flies away like
a fish through a wide net and all that leaves is vanilla
“Aunt?” you ask her and her eyes widen and she
drops the book on the ground and it hits the floor with a crash because she’s surprised and you must be sick because you try to
move your hands to hide from the noise and
the hands aren’t yours, they look like
what your grandfather looked like when he was gone and there was a funeral wasn’t there you don’t
remember fishes in a net at your grandfather’s house, lit up like
christmas with police lights after a long trip away
and your father so red faced and
cradling a bottle like a child and
you can hear the ice cream truck but she’s
not your aunt, no, your aunt is
a nurse and
“Can…” you trail off with your voice broken a thousand times “Ice cream?” You ask.
The woman pauses, stares at you for a long moment. She’s older than your mother and she
stares back at you and then slowly nods her eyes full of tears hot and running and strange
“Yes,” she says “we can get ice cream.”
and it’s hot on your tongue and the memories swim like fishes through the net your grandfather had like your mother swam away and left you with your father and you don’t remember your aunt but you taste vanilla
you must be sick to be in the hospital with hands that aren’t yours and a woman crying at your bed