Posted in Passages

Melting Point

Posted on by tq1695

The dentist’s wife,
not quite as evocative as the pilots wife.
They worked together
professional and assistant,
Mr and Mrs
husband and wife.
She always greeted people then took them in
and always called me Mr –
for 10 years,
until
one occasion when I was first appointment of the day –
7:30 a.m.
making small talk about the weather
asked how it was out there.
I replied it was raining when I left home but okay now
she wondered if I had been working all night
no, I always look like this first thing in the morning.
We both laughed
and after that she used my first name, never Mr.

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.