Waking in Los Angeles

Stephen Dunn

The paramedics spoke as if from afar

and I, who didn’t know where I was or why,

answered from the restaurant floor.

"I’m fine," I said, our most familiar lie.

My dinner companions explained I’d gone

ashen, and then died (one of them thought),

but I had merely mixed some medication

with some wine, not knowing my cough

was pneumonia’s broadcast from below.

Women faint. Men pass out.

I passed out (collapsed?) and now

I was going for a sirened ride through a state

not mine, on my back, oxygen up my nose.

The other diners returned to their food.

I think I heard that brief, polite applause

reserved for an opponent carried off a field.

I was their story now, their dessert.

Even I was thinking how I might be told.

There was this man, a stranger, lying there inert.

He was more interesting before he stirred and spoke.