Another for the Toads: internal monologue

Just when I think I should lie down because it's exhausting taking care of a post-surgical husband, an always-hungry Golden Retriever, and my own unfit self, I decide to take a little peek into my favorite garden: the online writers' group, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Kerry's challenge for today is too much fun to pass up, even when I'm so tired. She asks members and contributors to write an internal monologue. Kerry says the end result should be a piece of writing which reveals the character of the speaker, as well as the one who caused the problem addressed in the monologue.

So, with the permission of my better half, whom you know as Richard Schear, my intrepid photographer, I've written what he was probably thinking about his doctor after his recent preventative surgery.

   

THE ALBERTA PATIENT

the surgeon’s taken out, no doubt,

something I can’t live without!

I fear I’ll never, ever eat

another plate of rare red meat

Photo by Kay Davies, Aug., 2012

or chew a carrot—

I can’t bear it!

I feel so weak

I’m almost meek,

but if that doctor shows his face

I’ll tell him this is a disgrace!

I used to be a big, strong man

but now I know not what I am—

a shadow of my former self—

out to pasture, on the shelf,

tired, retired, retiring!

don’t want to eat a single thing,

especially what the nurses bring,

the whole experience makes me weep

and then it makes me fall asleep

twenty hours of twenty-four

until I fear I’ll wake no more.

can’t find my slippers on the floor:

can’t bend down because I’m sore,

and visitors are such a bore,

flowers they bring but nothing more— ah,

such a dread funereal aura.

I’m tired of thinking, and so, mayhap,

I’ll take another little nap...

Kay L. Davies, September, 2012