~ The Appointment

Doctor tell me   why do the nights stir me up like this, the room pirouettes, corkscrews, the thunder kicks the mattress and I walk the dark like a scared child crying for someone to turn on a light Sometimes in crowded rooms I feel out of place like the wrong curtains or being under-dressed, as if the scars glow and everyone knows something isn’t right I dialed you from the big black print splashed on yellow on a weak morning the day January died, because I had turned into ice, because the night before I laid on the floor infant-like in front of the fire and did not melt So, Doctor, tell me did I look pathetic in my over-sized shirt with the hurt stains and pain slopped on the front, when you said sit down and there were six chairs to choose from and I asked, is this a test I remember speaking of vultures, of longing, of daddy, you, with your clip board, loafers with no socks, scribbling my uneasiness into hopscotch squares, me, asking what I said that you found important Cramming my desperation into a fifty-minute hour of purging, wondering how many boxes of Kleenex were stacked in your supply cabinet, if I would even need them —I doubted it My malfunction came to you hunched over, hobbling, cramped with shame, neglect, and worthlessness —diminished and I begged you make me whole, a cure and all you could do and all you could do was medicate me until next Tuesday at two-thirty until next Tuesday# 4 Written October 2nd, 2001 © on Jan 06 2003 04:56 PM PST, Wendy Hammond   0 • 10