I’m sitting on a flip-up plastic seat. Waiting.
It’s cornflower blue:
the blue of balloons, a children’s toy.
The blue of hope. I wait.
The door that holds you in is powder blue
mist stretches and thins
letting the morning through
from snow-wrapped
mountains. My nostrils
sting in icy ether.
The floor’s a beach
the sand-flecked tide
ebbed to polished mirage
where curlews wobble
a fresh sluiced slab
a hall of mirrors
twisting faces into grief.
The trolley with the suction tubes
to make you come alive again
is red
fire brigade red
no-nonsense red
blood red just bled
not old or caked
or brown.
Or dead.
A white cloth drapes across the trolley top
an altar sheet
arranging its folds
cornering the shadows
angling for attention
come and paint me.
Now.
The exit doors (NO EXIT) are barred and midnight blue
too blue
to be trusted
midnight express
through a starry dome
to nowhere.
But I look back to the mountain sky.
Waiting. Watching the snow fall.