Entering through the doors
of a place that signifies
so many antagonistic things.
Stepping inside a place
where both life and death
are ever present.
     A place
that gives hope,
that brings despair,
that brings faith,
that brings misery.
    A place
most people have been in,
have dreaded the phone call
coming from a
    hospital.

Walking down the corridor,
passing doors that may
contain either joy and relief,
or may be trapped with pain.
Passing people by,
looking into their faces,
and knowing whether
they are the healed patient,
the mournful family member,
or the doomed one.

A rumbling of emotions
run through your body.
How can a place be the
dwelling of so many feelings?

Walking slowly
towards the door
you've dreaderd entering...

Until you reach it.
Right in front of you.
A white door with
a number insribed upon it.
A private room for an
ill human being.

Nothing is there to
Keep you from entering
Except your own nerves,
Your own fears,
Your own shaking hand.
If you think for too long,
You'll lose the courage.
This is something you
Must do.

Opening the door,
Your own fears becoming reality.
Your imagination much more
merciful than reality.
Because reality is there,
the Hard Truth shoved in your face.
The smell of death hangs about the room.
The slightest sign of life lingering is the beeping
of the machine next to your mother's bed.

She does not know you're here.
That you've flied miles to see her.
That you've left your family
to come sit by her bedside.
You wonder if she'll ever know you came...
A person in a coma may
never awake from the sleep
which death only waits to
keep forever.

Will she know you loved her?
Will she know you'll miss her?
Will she know many things
you never told her?

And so you sit there, looking
at her face, filled with wrinkles,
pale and blue from the sickness.
You sit and wait for the interminable
hours to pass, hoping you
won't go crazy from the silence
which slowly kills your heart
as you wait
for whatever comes next.