The Poem I Wrote in the Hospital Waiting Room
My father was in surgery. I couldn't wait. So I wrote.
My father was in surgery for seven hours, and I was in the waiting room for all of them. I couldn't sit still, couldn't read, couldn't do anything but wait, and the waiting was the thing that was killing me.
I wrote a poem. Not a good poem, not the kind that wins contests, but the kind that comes out when you are so scared you have to put it somewhere. I wrote about the way he held a cup of tea with both hands, like the warmth was the point. I wrote about the sound his keys made in the door at six in the evening. I wrote about the way he said my name, like he was still surprised I had turned out to be a person.
I wrote it on the back of a magazine subscription card, the only paper I could find, and I wrote it in pencil because the pen was in my father's coat and the coat was in the surgery and the surgery was the thing I was waiting for.
He came out of the surgery and he was fine. He is fine now. The poem is still on the subscription card, in the same drawer where I keep the things I don't know what to do with.
I have never shown it to him. It is the poem I wrote when I was waiting for him, and it is the poem that is the proof that I was there. The poem is not for him; it is for me. It is the thing I did when I could not do anything else.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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