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)