
The Waiting Place
by Leah Mueller
I sat in the lobby,
numb as a frozen vegetable,
surrounded by piles
of glossy magazines
meant to distract everybody
from the task at hand-
“How to Lose Ten Pounds
While Eating More Than Ever”
and “Sixteen Makeup Tricks
That Will Drive Him Wild in Bed!”
A sallow-cheeked teenage girl
crouched next to me,
thumbing eagerly
through one of the magazines,
jerking her head and laughing
while she waited for her name
to be called over the intercom.
Her darkened eyes
burrowed into the pages
like a furtive cupboard rodent,
and her chubby fingers
caressed the images
tenderly, as a lover would.
Finally she tossed
the magazine haphazardly
onto a table, went outside
to smoke a cigarette in the cold.
I watched her exhalations closely
and tried to decide
where her breath ended
and the smoke began,
but then the doctor
called my own name
over the crackling speakers-
so I left her there,
pacing hard and smoking
while she talked to her boyfriend
on her cheap cell phone.
I wandered through the open door,
took my place on the metal table,
and placed both of my bare feet
carefully in the stirrups.
Staring hard at the ceiling bulb,
I listened to the relentless drone
of hospital machinery,
and patiently waited for it to end-
while remembering his eager,
slippery hands, and his too-hot breath,
escaping from his mouth like a prisoner.
Leah Mueller is an independent writer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of one chapbook, “Queen of Dorksville” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2012), and two full-length books, “Allergic to Everything” (Writing Knights Press, 2015) and “The Underside of the Snake” (Red Ferret Press, 2015). Her work has been published in Blunderbuss, Sadie Girl Press, Origins Journal, Talking Soup, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, Cultured Vultures, and many other publications. She is a regular contributor to Quail Bell magazine, and was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival. She was a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest.