I sit in a waiting room heavy with use,
my chair with a crack in its vinyl seat.
Faint smells of rubber and exhaust.
Cosmopolitan two months old,
Newsweek from three weeks ago
that no one touches.
TV grabbing at me
in the corner of the ceiling,
controls out of reach,
no remote.
Volume loud enough to steal silence,
annihilate peace,
but too muted to project news or weather
or headache remedy.
Caught mid-flight in a web of
empty words
in a room without hush
where no one speaks
or watches or listens to
this anesthetizing machine,
phones or laptops preferable,
while somewhere a bluebird trills.
Originally published in Trestle Ties June 2020