Hospital Living is a poem by Tessa Foley published in Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review (2016) and is connected to the poet's experiences of Queen Alexandra Hospital, Cosham.

Hospital Living

I want my shoes back, pointy-toed scarlet
To dance on mosaics, I want to stand up without a draft slivered
To the bottom of top, my eye worn from drawing on a stranger at dawn.
My name is not cut up in sections these days, in full it's
Blue smudged on the wall with a star, sometimes red underline.
This could be my time.

I'm easy chair charming, a dent in the mattress,
That's a print to be found, a magnificent actress,
You know you can swallow, encore, Oh No! Spit!
And they own my remains, fact they own my todays, in their
Witchly smooth claws. I want to play ball on a lawn in my past.
My heart has a plan.

My sheets aren't my own, I'm a space in the line up,
Billed beneath conducting hands, my parts high strung
Puppets and inner arm scratched with silky milk serving,
It froze me in time, snuck me past the back door but my
Slowing will begs to taste one more bottle of red,
Though still I'm not dead.

And I sink in a spiral and hear crying horses, see through a mist,
Pour myself over ledges, folding and spooling, I'm cake
Mix, a soup tied in suture, their stitched Campbell container, my
Fingers as wings not twitching or light, I'm so flat but the world is at risk from
My side, I giggle in veins and whiten my eyeballs.
And this means I still breathe.

It's flickering tea time and my tongue is so present, just
Sip it, they say. My execution was poor so I've stayed for a day,
Maybe more, they don't know so whilst clinging, I want. I want churchbells and
Cookies, ten more trips to the bookies, team songs on the beach and then
Sex on a gurney, a lover to burn me,
It don't stop till it stops.

Tessa Foley is a significant figure in the contemporary poetry scene who is gaining a glowing reputation and developing a distinctive voice. Originally from Flitwick, a tiny town in Bedfordshire, she lived in Portsmouth from later childhood, and gained her Master's degree in Creative Writing at the University of Portsmouth, where she now works as an administrator. Published by magazines including Agenda, Antiphon, and Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, and recognised in the Verve Poetry Competition and Bristol Poetry Prize, she won the Live Canon International Single Poem Competition in 2013. Her debut collection Chalet Between Thick Ears was launched in November 2018 at the Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden, and she has since read from the collection at several prestigious locations including the Greenwich Library, Harbour Books, Whitstable, and the Boulevard Theatre in Soho. Tessa also produced the collection Garden, with her sister, Anna Foley, as the illustrator. Garden was created to raise funds for Portsmouth Abuse and Rape Counselling Service, a charity for which both sisters volunteered. Launched in May 2021, and lauded by the poet Glyn Maxwell, Tessa’s amazing new collection, *What Kind of a Bird Are You? offers ample evidence of the emergence of a considerable talent.

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