heated blanket

You stay with me
during my colonoscopy.
You could have dropped me off
at the revolving door. 
Father, I am more than a grown woman.
Your one eye the color of sassafras
absolves the painted block
room, the creaking chairs, 
the nuisance of form-filling
on a clipboard. The scrub nurse
takes my clothes, my glasses. 
She stabs me in the back
of one hand, but still I recognize
the blurry shape of you,
measured voice of my childhood.
You have had a few scopes by now
and fill the time telling me
labyrinthine stories
of other jabwork. 
The worst of it, you say, 
is waking up naked and alone.
The gurney arrives.
You squeeze my shoulder, fix
the nurse with your singular gaze
and request for me
a heated blanket
so when I wake I’m not cold.

© Tori Grant Welhouse