Waiting Room
by Odin Roark

One’s special space
Where chin resting
Upon knees tucked
Arms wrapped tight
To be the ball we wish to be

How many such moments
Harbored our protected thoughts
Those times when
Happiness hung tenuous
Like a spider’s web
Trusting no harm would come
While trying to anchor
Tomorrow’s hope

We’ve all been there
Whether in one’s closet
Bedroom corner
Or storeroom darkness
As child
Adult
Senior

We carry our waiting room
Upon our backs
Held tight in prayerful hands
Often beneath squeezed eyelids
And sometimes
As frozen ice
So vulnerable we feel
So vulnerable

Along the way
The waiting room
Receives anxious news
Information
Results
Decisions
Hopes
Dreams
Fears
Eager bearers of answers
All with passkeys

Remembrance
Brings back painful times
When trying too hard to maintain focus
Moments escape into the void

Some of us arrive at a different moment
That time when perhaps
We neither regret the past
Or fear the future

We unclasp our grip
Lift the head of our often-heavy burden
Spread our arms
And breathe

Often for the first time
And discover that other special space
Acceptance

Accepting discovery as precious
Comes not without pain
For assent to enlightenment
Will always be fraught with rocky passage

But the reaching of summit’s reward
Is without parallel
Forging forever
That life exists as moments-in-waiting
Or moments one allows to live
Regardless the consequence

Ah
The juncture

The moment lived