Waiting Room

Windowless purgatory for patients.
Those who ail load into magazines
Until they can be charged
For some costly golden bullet
In pill-bottle form.

Someone’s little girl
With ears bandaged tight.
A lady blowing her brains out
Through her nostrils
Due to who-knows-what.

After taking up their infirmities
On a clipboard and checking
The proper boxes, they mark time
Until the clock’s nervous tick
Summons the Good Doctor.

An old man shuffles to the corner
With a hacking cough.
The crease of his pant leg
Traces the crisp line
Of an obsolete metal prosthesis.

A boy with two black eyes
Takes apart the plastic pieces
Of a many-colored model of the heart,
Complete with intricate diagrams
And many terms in Latin.

You had only scheduled a checkup,
But the man with a swollen lip
And crutches is eyeing you
Like a long-lost brother.
“Be right as rain,” he murmurs.

The moths orbiting the light fixture
In crazy spirals—they, likewise,
Could not have envisioned
This unseemly affliction before,
As inchworms measuring floor tiles.