The port rests on my high right chest, a pink crater,

a  cleanly folded linen shroud kissed with tears

wheeled from operating room to recovery

by melting folds of scrub blues with iodoform scents.

The fragrance of me is creased into a tucked blanket,

monitors on my legs and arm caressing rhythmic,

sounds dissolving into the hum left in a plastic wind-

wafting hints of my odorless crenulated alchemical cure.

My wife holds the origami of my old self in a

blue zip lock hospital bag that opens with a

singe of nitrate, the final aroma of good cooked food

settling on a rack then vanishing into a memory portal.

I smell no future,  just the staleness of hope and fear

as I uncrease myself into my clothes and stand unfolded

at the exit, in the threshold of a shadowless sunlight

whose sleeves I sniff for the blossoming plum tree.

Buy my latest book at Amazon, Lulu and Barnes and Noble online.