I never told them how long I’d be gone, and by five-thirty,
the patients had begun to crowd the sockets.

This made for an awkward entrance as I lurched,
balancing paper sacks, through the doorway.

“What’s in the bags?” one lisped.

I feigned deafness and began distributing limbs
as if I were the conductor of a children’s mass.

“My arms don’t match,” another whined.

“Be grateful,” I snapped, “you’ve got arms at all.”

***

(many thanks to the posthumous journal Cranky for first giving this poem a home)