Amy V. Rubin

The mood is tender as I wait.
A scattering of subtle sadnesses
emerges, paced one layer at a time
translucently over office music.

A child plays in the kid’s corner
while her parents’ glances exchange
a disconcerting question, a tugging
angst. He shrinks to Rodin’s Thinker,
she gazes outside the window.

A young man with a protective
mask, too tall to lean on his mother,
is asked ‘Do you need a wheelchair
today, Nicholas?’ They walk together
past the door holding onto love.

The young woman, losing her vision
and disturbingly unsteady, now will be
escorted in emergency by a team of ten,
still conscious but now visibly worried
to a place for more immediate care.