The skilled nurse admitting you to the skilled nursing facility
tells me the paperwork will kill me when I was sure our old age
and your fall and fracture would kill us both.
Stacks of forms
stacked against me help the bureaucracy of injury
up to and including death guarantee that no matter what happens
to you or when everyone will be paid in advance.
I sign here
then there. Just initial or write our address next to the SSN
again.
Write all the numbers you can think of.     Turn the pages
and the screed doesn’t end. Flip the pages faster and faster.
Finally
there is nothing but fine print as fine as the facility of skilled nurses
who admit no margin of error or safety and our lives have no margins left and bleed
off each page
o my dear.