I Am You

The truly selfless
know we are not
separate. I am
anything but
selfless, but today
when I saw you
in hospice, in your
hospital bed, in your
dementia, drowning
in the vast shallows
of the bedsheets,
which were tangled
around your legs
from all your kicking
and scissoring
as though you were
trying to swim
to the other shore,
I thought to myself:
That could be me.
And then I thought:
Maybe that will be me
in how many years?
And then I thought:
No. That IS me. I am you.
And I took your hands
in my hands and I
pulled us ashore.

Gracie

After the surgery, when I was still in the hospital, married to the commode—couldn’t get up and walk to the bathroom, couldn’t shower—a nurse’s aide washed me where I lay. I was a pale, naked, helpless thing, and she whispered to me in her melodic Island or African accent that it was okay, it was alright. And I’m not ashamed to say I wept quietly, thanking her between sobs, blessing her for her work, her understanding. She told me her name was Gracie, and how perfect was that, because it felt like a kind of grace, though not right away, no, in fact at first it felt like an indignity, an imposition, a well-meaning torture of sorts because I was weak and vulnerable and unable to do for myself, and here was this large smiling Black woman with big hands and a musical accent standing beside my hospital bed and informing me that she was going to wash me where I lay, right now, because it was her job, and because I hadn’t washed in days, had I, and because I needed to be washed. At first I felt embarrassed, mortified, violated as she lifted my hospital gown and went to work, gently maneuvering the warm soapy washcloth across my chest, then my belly, my genitals, my thighs and knees and calves. It was when she got to my feet, after she had rinsed the washcloth, wrung it, dipped it back in the basin of soapy water, wrung it again, and then began washing each of my toes, one at a time, with an almost this-little-piggy tenderness, that my resistance began to melt away and in its place a warm gratitude suddenly gripped me so tightly that I couldn’t stop whispering the little choked thank-you’s and bless-you’s that seemed to be escaping like too much air or too much love from my dry, constricted throat, which was still sore from the breathing tube. She said you’re welcome my dear, and then she tactfully untied the hospital gown and asked me to try to turn on my side so she could remove it completely and wash my back, and though it hurt, I did as she asked, I gripped the handrails and pulled myself onto my side, trembling a little, as I heard her behind me rinsing the washcloth and dipping it again in the basin and wringing it again.  And then I felt its wet clean warmth sliding firmly across my back and my shoulders, and I whispered thank-you again as she washed my buttocks, the backs of my thighs, then gently parted my legs and briskly but thoroughly washed my anus before returning the washcloth to the basin. Then, expertly, nimbly, she toweled me dry and helped me to turn onto my back again, and helped me into a new, clean hospital gown, and raised the angle of my hospital bed a little higher, and then a little higher, until I was able to look her in the eye—because I hadn’t looked her in the eye yet. So we looked each other in the eye, and again I said thank you, thank you for your good work. It’s a blessing, I said. You’re an angel, I said. And I meant it more than anything I had said to anyone in a very long time. And she said thank you, and you’re welcome, and she called me her dear again. And then she was gone, wheeling her little cart out the door of my hospital room, down the hallway to the next patient, and the next patient, and the next.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems and essays appear widely online and in print. He has won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. His latest books are *Pitching for the Apostates *(2023) and *Perfect Disappearances *(2025). He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. Website: paulhostovsky.com.