"Waiting Room"

 

The corridor reaches the corner

And beyond.

 

Clinging to life,

Bones stretching parchment skin

Patients wait

Gaunt faces

Gazing at the floor.

 

Agnostics and atheists,

Entreat a god they do not think hears

Hoping they might be proven wrong.

 

Feet raise

A cleaner mops the floor

She smells of Savlon

Everything does

It’s in the air.

 

“Ticket number six to room four.”

“Ticket number seven to room eleven.”

 

They check their numbers

Rise to face

They know not what.

To be weighed

Investigated

Attached to strange machineries

That isolate them from humanity

 

Scanning doctors’ faces

For a flicker of promise

But this is just another day

Nothing special

Just routine.

 

Sugar coated

Assurances

Concealing negative prognoses

Allay the patients' fears

But not their families’

 

These, glad their turn is not yet

Conspire against reality

Beneath veils of brittle optimism

And brave face bonhomie.

 

Yet those ‘dry bones’

Prisoned in

Parchment skin

Will slough

The burden of pain and fear.

 

And step into life beyond life

Love beyond love.

 

Outside this waiting room,

Where life begins.