but some of us are living in death’s waiting room, not by choice, not to attain enlightenment, but because we got this ping on our phone “You have new test results” and then found ourselves sitting in rows of black padded chairs with a TV blaring “From Fixer to Fabulous” reading each twinge like a tea leaf, each scan like a tarot card
at some point, our names are called and we rise and recite our date of birth Outside someone smokes a cigarette, and grackles congregate in a tree.
And we test again, result again. Meanwhile, a car drives by, some rain falls.
Here we give So much blood and yet it is all so clean. Elsewhere, a meeting drones on, a freshman makes her choral debut.
Even in the gap between test and result, where gravity triples and oxygen thins to barely breathable levels, the world still plods along
If it hears us calling “wait, hold up”, it does not show it.
And so we lumber after it, unable to bare the wasting of even one unbearable minute.