Chemo

//kate paul

And we wait
  under blankets, reclining.

The machine pumps, whirring softly,
  buzzers sound from chair to chair.

Plastic tubing hung on metal tree stands
  become our parade, our pushed poison, our
  resigned-to companion.

We trade stories with the other chairs
  while we wait, like junkies.
We don’t know what we’re doing here.

This day isn’t mine/ours
  it belongs to
  hours on the weeping tree
  killing the disease inside me.

This day, this job,
  is to wait, be
  the patient patient,
  to be willing to go along with this archaic dispensary.

This limbo place familiar against my will.

This necessary evil
  from it I’ll walk way
  run in fact.
  and forget that I was ever this person.

//Kate Paul is under the influence of a spirited disposition, a curiosity of colour, mythologies of all sorts, and a fortune-cookie mentality of how to understand the natural and manmade world.