(for Patricia)

This is the waiting room.

In the waiting room you wander carpeted halls,

ruminate in doorways;

watch the dust float and settle on

the other side of the bed.

Vacuum drones, teaspoon clinks on sink;

Outside filters in through a haze of listless net curtains,

light and sound stretched and numb,

drifting and seeping into inertia.

In evenings you meet the kitchen window;

exchange glances with fluorescent shadows on the melamine.

What did you eat for dinner mum? Oh, a bit of toast.

Above you the clock ticks perpetually at ten past two.

You watch the needle throw itself

into the cyclical void, gaining

a millimetre more air then

falling back.

Pause for breath.

The nightly television natters into cold space.

It fills up every corner of the living room,

churning out blue light facsimiles of life and love.

You construct a cocoon from carbon-paper sheets

of words and looks and other recalled moments,

layered and layered with

flimsy distraction and

four programmes of evening news.

But the chill creeps in;

it twists its way into

all the hollow spaces.

Sometimes we call you and the phone rings out.

We imagine it echoing in the study,

across the good room with the photographs and glass daffodils,

through vacant doorways and along tiled floors.

Perhaps the tv is too loud.

Perhaps you forgot your hearing aids.

Perhaps you’ve already fallen asleep.

On Sundays we sit in the living room

in the empty chair,

and drink tea with you from Cornishware cups.

And the day comes when we decide

this house will become Lovely 4 Bedroom Mid Century Family Home.

We help you sift through its contents,

to fill charity bins and

reluctant cupboard shelves;

distil it all down to its proper economy

and rehome it

in a new plasterboard box meant for one.

Here you will join the bingo nights;

you will make yourself look smart -

lipstick and rayon slacks, one crisp fold down the front

in shades of beige white and cream -

and go on outings to the art gallery.

But when afternoon light wanes and shadows stretch and flex and twist into corners and are

cut again by the flicker of the television,

you will sit in solitude,

waiting.

Waiting for him to take you too.