The Open Window
There are others in the waiting room,
rehearsing their symptoms.
Enter here and you become a patient,
broken, ailing, someone who needs mending.
Hoping for relief, a pill, a kind word,
hoping for a good day,
when the expression ‘bedside manner’
is a synonym for kindness.
Trying not to listen to their conversations,
the repetitive chatter of the radio,
the disembodied voice of the programme's host
and his relentless cheer
irritating my consciousness.
Why I have come, I couldn’t say.
I need no help, I am whole, I am strong.
I have nothing to say.
A flood of words to prove the point.
The healer’s face, kind and compassionate,
listens intently,
eyes clouding over, softening.
Her quiet voice probing.
I look away.
I will not cry.
Haunting memory, long-buried pain,
‘face me’, they cry, ‘see me’, ‘feel me’.
A helpless child revisits
aching loneliness.
Thoughtless words cut deep,
the wounds unhealing.
See,
she is falling,
catch her,
hold her close,
comfort her
help her.
Accept the hurt and,
strong now,
heal the child you were.
The time will come
when all is well.
A window opens.
Friko
Posted over on her site Friko's World
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