I go
tomorrow
to be stuck.
When you wake,
grope for black coffee
and stumble out of bed--
think of me.

Sitting
cold and tired
in a white waiting room
that reeks of cleanliness
(which is not next to godliness,
whatever they say)
I will sit
and wait.

At seven AM,
sterile-faced nurses
with scrubbed hands
and cheerful smiles
will pierce
a blue vein,
and watch it
spurt red.

(I hate their cheerfulness
at 7 in the morning,
but I smile too,
deceitfully.)

Afterwards,
as that bit of red
in lonely tubes
is whisked away
to microscopes,
and peering men
in masks--
I go
and find again
that barren whiteness
that clinical cold
that marks
a waiting room.

At 8 AM, when
you reach an absent hand
for marmeladed toast,
and fried egg;
and you quaff
the orange
(with which
no word
rhymes)
juice--
think of me.
I fast.
I fast because
they say to.
They don't
say why.

As clock
strikes 9,
and you push
your plate away,
happy for no other reason
but that you are satisfied
and life is good--
think of me.

A second vein--
a second spurt--
a second tube...
the same waiting room.

Another hour,
another needle,
and you sit at your desk,
and read the morning mail--
(a nurse
sits at her desk
in red hair and glasses
that stare vacantly
at paperwork
or nothing.
She is not rude,
just impersonal--
this is her job.)

I wonder,
can one die
of boredom?
Magazines
in sterile colors
sit gazing
at the wall.
A nurse
at the door
(this one male)
says it is time.

My arm grows tired
of tight elastic
and the pinch
of the needle.

Do you think of me
as you leave the house
and start the engine running
while you jog back
for your keys?
(You had
your mother's.)
I am still there.
It is nearly twelve,
and I'm nearly done.
The paperwork
is filled out
by the red-haired nurse
who smiles for politeness' sake.
I do not smile back.

An open door,
that I would run through
if I were not
so tired.

I think...
I think
I will go back home
and sleep.