The Waiting Room
By Leslie B. Neustadt

Like riders on the subway we sit,
eyes averted but on similar journeys.
There is only one reason to be
at Dana-Farber Cancer Center.

Paper bracelets on wrists announce,
This is the one with cancer.
Oddly love’s quiet power suffuses
this soulless space.

She wears a black sweater
with blood-orange embroidery.
Still sturdy, with an iron heart,
not hardened beyond feeling but rusting.

She speaks loudly in Russian to her husband,
unlike the frail patients who sit in our midst.
Wasting away, spirit gone from eyes,
their taste for living sapped.
Parents, children, lovers try to keep them
aloft for just a bit longer.

Their masks and gloves provide
puny protection from germs
made malevolent by chemotherapy.
Those of us still feisty
draw lines in the sand.