patients

in waiting rooms people fall silent
for fear of being a nuisance.

the silence could be comfortable,
as in churches and libraries,
but this is a waiting room,
where everyone is waiting
for something.
and it's usually bad news.
and everyone wants it to happen as soon as possible,
which is the complete opposite of what's going to happen.

instead the silence is tense;
purposeful and strained.
a quiet standard has been set.
one that is communally maintained.
and for it, we repress all our personal tones
that might otherwise have blended 
into the ambient sounds and phones
of chatter and clatter,
of rumbling syllables and burbling prosody.

silence is a mute and un-worded language
that screams social conformity,
and aids only in drawing attention to those things that pierce it,
such as the sound of an elastic band snapping,
a cough, a copy-cat, a snotty snort
a smothered sneeze, a child's cry,
a frustrated sigh,
or the awkward scuffle of chairs.

in these venues of taciturn delay,
as we endeavour to entertain ourselves with out-of-date gloss,
we notice
that when someone coughs
it is everyone's cue
to cough too,
quickly, within the constricting window of a second or so,
so as to get back to the holy hush
and the expanding span of polite indifference.

couldn't we all agree to murmur instead?
murmur and relax in the cushions and fog of ambiguous vibration,
giving our jerking anxiety soft corners.
bodily functions will not yield for the sake of a few decibels,
the lady across from me can testify,
as i pray for a cloud to rain lucky dribbles,
so that we may bask in the irregular giggles
of a spluttering tin roof.

i had an appointment for twenty to four
to discuss the joint dysfunction of my clicking jaw.
...at 5 o'clock i was told that i should be speaking to a dentist.

shhhhhhhh...