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Annie
M. Rice
Healing, 9:30 p.m. |
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She called me again
asking for hot chocolate.
She can't understand that I am not the physician,
But merely the three dollars that pays the tab.
We discuss, but cannot awaken self sufficiency.
She called me again, pleading for that corner booth.
He doesn't love her, he doesn't care.
How could he not care,
Questions, deep, dark, dripping like chocolate?
In history we learned about John Wilkes Booth.
Mary Lincoln-she desperately needed a physician.
Ah! We've been over this-Where is self sufficiency?
The blonde has walked by 25 times with the tab.
The arms race has exploded the government's tab
and men build glass ceilings. They don't care.
Ethiopian babies will never understand self sufficiency,
Yet we sit, sipping, sipping, sipping, steamy chocolate.
I fill the void of a temporary physician
and see the bars fall around the vinyl seats of this booth.
I pray-Please . .
. redemption in Abraham's booth,
Or is that bosom? Where is that tab?
Certainly, malpractice, a failing physician
I cannot make myself care.
Hurt, ominous-dark, like chocolate.
Yet, she returns, seeking his sufficiency.
but similar - sweltering under the lamp baking the booth.
Whipped cream, sweet, dissolves in brooding chocolate,
Dripping like mud, leaving its ring tattoo on the tab.
She doesn't think about me and the tender care
To which I come each time, neglecting my own physician.
"Prozac, Prozac,"
says the physician
as she heals with her pharmaceutical sufficiency.
Obviously neglecting Hippocratic judgment, doesn't care
Because she is not trapped in this deathly booth,
Swirling, swirling, sick. "Will you get the tab?"
She asks as I run my fingers through my hair-roots like chocolate.
I need a physician-I
need self-sufficiency.
I really don't care and hate counseling in this corner booth.
Craving my own chocolate smeared fingers, next time, my mother will get
the tab.