The Incredible Shrinking Lynn

My friend, Hugh Gilmore, wrote this in his column. It’s about watching me shrink.




And each day, this muscular guy who started out with a big torso and thick arms slipped farther into his shirt and jacket, until by the culminating 35th day of radiation he looked like a little kid wearing his big brother’s clothes.



And my dear friend Brenda writes from deepest Mississippi that she's reluctant to call for fear of disturbing me. Here's what I think about life while you're waiting:

clothes call

through the hospital halls, jaws locked, eyes straight ahead
march the lock-legged legions of the sick in clothes they wore
when they were well. costumed each as a former self.
All wrapped up in yesterday sinking through today
with collar buttons on chests and pleated waists
and sleeves rolled up to where their hands end.

On the street outside, the man with two kids shows off
his teenage jacket, boyhood pants.
the lady who left her husband last year does her hair
like it was on her wedding day.
the off-duty cop flashes the chains as he sports
for stuff and something on the street.
the priest goes by in his jogging suit
point guard for the gospel according to.
the bhikku wraps his saffron robe
in winter tweed and suffers not a whit.

And then the bell strikes one, two three
and everyone strips off their past
and stares blinking in the fierce light of now
and someone-the cop? the lady?
starts to giggle and the bhikku smiles
and then the hospital echoes like a horn filled up
with its own music as Extra Large hits the floor
and Medium, naked, begins to laugh.