Rust - Shawna Swetech

[Lawrence Robinson]

Rust 
 

Color of oxidized metal or the brown  
of fungus on a rose leaf. Stainless steel  
won’t corrode, neither will plastic. But once, 
I ran my finger over a spot of powdery bronze  
on a cast-iron skillet, marveling how the color 
stained my skin. Then, decades later, that rotation 
in the ER during nursing school, when a young man 
came in hemorrhaging from his mouth, a few days
post-tonsillectomy, spitting copious volumes of blood 
into a pink washbasin. We ran his gurney down the hall
 and straight into an OR suite for emergent surgery 
before he bled out. Afterward, I couldn’t stop trembling,
had to step outside into the cool morning air 
before helping clean the exam room: the burgundy
splattered walls; the fishing of paper towels 
from the basin of coagulating, still-warm blood. 
I’ll never forget the sickening glisten of floating fat, 
the blood’s metallic odor, like copper or rusted iron. 
How the large, soft clots moved against my gloved hand—
the roiling horror of that very close call. 

	- Shawna Swetech