The people I trust are letting rubber gloved-fingers
in their mouths. We do not know this person.
They want me to go next but I can’t
stop thinking about the waiting room
and how it has everything I’ve ever wanted:
17 fake leather chairs to count, a comments
and suggestion box shaped like a classic
red post box to point at, a wall-sized
photograph of Manchester’s landscape
sort of like the sky out of our flat window,
a plastic bin just shorter than me.
The tall man who carried me up the stairs
is saying words like Filling and Extractions
and I have a sticker with a pig on it.

© Carl Burkitt 2023