The Waiting Room, The Taking Room Poem by Joshua Bantum

The rigid maple leaf trembles outside,
a tidal wave in the sky printed on red and white cloth.

Frigid white filler dressing the facades
in all ways.

There is no pollen or ecstatic life to watch being created
to write about, to distract yourself with, to cry about.
There is only sparse warmth in our room
as we wait.
The pager set as a trap
triggering walls to come down.
Signifying a generation that has come to die in these hospital halls.

Our pager rests for the full four hours though,
but with a second, I heard one call.
A scream against the otherwise silenced air,
and aside the knitting needles clinking,
multiple pairs swiftly kissing one another in passing.

I heard the pagers call break into our room,
and the strangers looked up with my eyes,
and we looked around
searching for the cancer growing inside our worries.

The target was red,
her eyes already preparing to watch the mirror reflect back to her
future lonely mornings.
A slightly colder bed, a slightly colder winter.

Death can always bring sympathy, but it rarely brings empathy.
And as the pager rang, and refused to be silent,
a polarization strewn out among her eyes, and ours,

She stood up and left the room.
Our eyes fell back down, and the knitting needles spoke up
again,
kissing and running after each other, innocent
like children during recess, playing games.
Quickening there chase, then slowing there pace, then quickening
again,
and all ignorance is displayed with our self-created distractions,
but when the bell rings
again,
they must all pause, and look back up
again
and return to the study room
again,
slowly being subjugated below the edge of revelation,
which unveils light and darkness in all hues.

Again

We look around for another set of eyes which now knows
what we never want to know.
Which now sees a future
we could have never foreseen when we first fell in love.

Love, finally buried in winter,
we could have never thought it to be so sad,
but were here, witnessing so many have this lesson be taught to them, this revelation being discovered anew...Again

That life is death, and love is heartbreak
end is beginning.
Again,
It all beginning
And ending.
Again.