Hospital waiting rooms

Tonight I dream of red tape
Red tape and bureaucratic lines and pens with clickers broken
Of hospital waiting rooms with stuffed plastic chairs
Little boys and girls patched up with stickers and lollies
X-rays to detect cancer and gunshots to close holes
Piles of paperwork, absolutely monstrous amounts of paperwork
Referrals and specialists and appointments and cancellations
And phone calls to those specialists to get the appointments back
Crinkly wax paper on disguised autopsy tables
Little rubber triangles to test the reflexes we know I don't have
Scripts drilled into heads so there's enough time to get bagels before appointment four
Hours lost in in-between rooms painted light blue
A scratched up child's abacus and abandoned cardboard books in the corner
Tied up in mazes of beige hallways
I dream of hours spent in a dented green Subaru distracted by books 
Driving between urgent cares and emergency rooms and hospitals and physios
Playing candy crush on mother's phone while I'm jabbed and pinched and squeezed
"So what brings you in today?"
I don't know Lucien
Maybe what it says on my forty previous intake forms
Mental health forms with boxes to tick off
More and more crossed out with every visit warranting concerned looks from nurses
Piles of pills on disinfected linoleum countertops
Athletic tape and bandaids and painkillers and prescriptions and pt and compresses
Once those fail
Heating pads and chili oil and half a bottle of cream from 2002 and this bracelet with magnets and crystals on it
And a pillow to scream into and to soak up my tears
And then I wake up in the morning to an alarm so I don't take my lexapro too late
Because if I do it warrants even more doctors
And that would be terrible, wouldn't it