napowrimo #1: in the waiting room, after many months

in the waiting room, after many months
still here is the woman who serves coffee
writes your name on a piece of paper with a blunt pencil
and asks you to wait
in her trained measured whisper
you can tell from her clothes that you've now seen
go from shabby to new
yet retaining a blandness she can't somehow shake off
that she is another of this feminist doctor's
charity cases
our doctor travels considerably and collects curios
that pile up into meaningless diptychs
in the contrived living room setting of this waiting room
a strained, silent disguise
this woman once handed me a coffee cup and asked me
to check her horoscope on my laptop
i remember laughing
i remember her teeth protruding even more than usual
in a not entirely ugly expression of incomprehension
clearing my face, i asked, "what sign are you?"
"libra"
i googled "horoscope libra"
realizing the buttons and the wait was making this more meaningful
than the many thumbed newspapers
i could not help my eye wandering to the latest addition
the big brass turtle by my feet
head protruding slightly from a shell it'd rather stay under
face set in that bland expression of the ignorant
that can be mistaken for wisdom
i remember seeing metaphors pile up
on either side of the scale
"a good day for love and decisions"
have you ever seen the yellow of an egg
just as it is tipped from the cracked cup
sharp, glistening, the clearest version of itself?
her face and those teeth...
cracked cup, glistening, clear
an hour later she is telling a sleepy receptionist
of the custody battle she is fighting
o god how is she fighting it?
how does she walk into court each morning with those teeth
that tell everyone, i am good at serving coffee and asking people to wait?
i want to polish her shell
call her every morning and read her the same horoscope
"a good day for love and decisions"
i want to see her husband
her son
tell them how good her coffee is
how eager she is to serve it
how painstakingly she crosses each name out on her list
pencil stub gripped tight
and how sometimes her green kurta
brushes past a brass turtle
the swishing sound waking
the entire room from an eternal wait

(read write poem)