A clinical outing:
The hospital room is
fair, square, sterile —
by its vapid
medical posters
and lusterless hospital tools.
And I ornament
the ungilded table
of an unostentatious exam room,
reticent and face down,
wearing an insipidly blue and
unbacked hospital gown,
pressing the prints
of my toes into
the ribbed face of
a steely hospital stool.
And across from me,
my doctor is facing me,
an earnest and waxen effigy,
swathed by a staid and starchy white coat,
in this hospital where
the rooms are square.
I hear a query then my breath arrests,
because I am quite familiar,
yes, I am well aware
of the intruding, forebodingly affable stare
in this hospital where
the posters are bloodless
and the rooms are square —
yes, for these customary social snares,
I have well-devised guises.
I am usually well prepared.
But is this it?
I am implicated but am I obliged to share?
My timorous tints and tones,
that I am conditioned to believe
must remain unaired —
my practices, lamentations and languages for love:
most cherished, unvoiced,
and still so unknown,
dwelling well within their spaces of refuge,
a borderless and bounding expanse…
Will you be the first to whom I confess?
Will the plight of orientation be my diagnosis?
Poetry Thursdays is an initiative that highlights poems by medical students. If you are interested in contributing or would like to learn more, please contact our editors.
Editor-in-Chief and Former Writers-in-Training Intern
Geisinger College of Health Sciences
Eshiemomoh Osilama is a medical student at Geisinger College of Health Sciences in Scranton, PA, Class of 2024. He graduated from Columbia University in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in biology. He enjoys reading and writing poetry, baking, theater, singing, museums, traveling, beaches and oceans, photography, and being an extraordinary guncle. Momoh is pursuing a career in psychiatry.
