There was I, bewildered, pained, frozen,
outside the glass door of the ICU,
you, my brother, seemingly faraway,
somewhere beyond, beyond turmoils—
the punctuated electronic beeps in your ambience
consonant with my own thumping heart;
it was all so sudden, the way
your biological systems gave in one by one
and the machines took over—
breath, circulation and life;
strangely I recalled our days on the bustling playfield,
flying kites, trading marbles with the boys—
my big-brotherly hand shielding you from the bullies,
now hanging limp, helpless, as umpteen tubes
Invaded your passive body;
from across the glass door, it seemed to me
you were another playful kite, string detached,
rising up, shrinking, shrinking to a tiny speck
in the vast heavenly blue; and here I was
just a gasp away, a prayer away—
when a masked nurse stepped out to tell me gravely,
“the doctor wants to have a word with you!”