I finally got a confirmed surgery date and I’ve been having the fear that when the doctors put me to sleep, I won’t wake up. This poem is inspired by that fear.
Chemical Death: Anaesthesia
1
They say it all is measured, safe, Controlled,
A practiced rite the hospital has told,
Yet, as you sign and let your body lie;
A quieter part of you begins to pry.
2
The mask is placed; they bid you “Breathe in slow;”
A vapoured chemistry begins to flow.
So trumpet blast, no harsh or violent sweep,
Just circuits dimming, gently, into sleep.
3
Anaesthesia is a courteous descent;
A planned, reversible impoverishment.
It does not break you, only turns you down,
Removes the king and leaves a vacant Crown.
4
Still, in that glide where thought is growing thin,
A sharper, private question enters in:
What if this darkness, made to be a door,
Behaves instead like an ocean without shore?
5
The charts will note: response to drug was fine,
The pulse behaved, the levels held their line.
And yet no graph can fully guarantee
The soul’s return across that inner sea.
6
For most, the drug withdraws, as was designed,
Breath strengthens and the world reclaims the mind.
But risk, however small, is not a lie;
We know some travellers simply do not fly.
7
This is the fear: that chemistry so kind,
Which kindly interrupts the waking mind,
Might press a fraction deeper than we meant
And never fully cancel its intent.
8
Yet, in that room are eyes that do not rest,
Machines that listen, staff who know this test.
Their art is not to send you into night,
But lead you back, restoring pulse and light.
9
So call it “chemical death” if you refer
To power drugs hold over character,
To how a measured agent can suppress
The loudest, proudest centres of the press.
10
But name it also pause, not ruin’s call,
A practiced fall designed for after all.
For terror speaks, “What if I don’t awake?”
And science answers, “Every guard’s in place.”
11
If still that doubt stays whispering in your head,
it only proves how much you love the bread
Of morning, breath, familiar human air;
The wanting back is evidence you care.
Mystic Anomanly 