THE WAITING ROOM
by Raye Hendrix
if the ceiling is not a ceiling
but a sky if the plaster
popcorn protrusions
are stars if the walls
of this white room are not boundaries
but low-hanging clouds if the gift
of the flower is blue if
linoleum does not mean floor
but field where each speck
of gray is a dandelion gone
to seed if there is only
one way out that dark hallway
then I will bear it
this hard living I will live
as hard as I can
and while I live the seeding
dandelions are wishes or if not wishes
prayers and if prayers
then the lonely door
and hallway are the mouth
and throat of god
and if the gift of the flower
is blue it’s because
I have swallowed everything red
About the author
Raye Hendrix is a writer from Alabama. The author of the chapbooks Every Journal Is A Plague Journal (Bottlecap Press) and Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press), she is also the winner of the 2019 Keene Prize for Literature and Southern Indiana Review’s 2018 Patricia Aakhus Award. Raye's work has been featured in Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, Shenandoah, Cimarron Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere, and they are the Poetry Editor of Press Pause Press. Raye holds degrees from Auburn University, an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and she is a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon. You can find more of their work at rayehendrix.com.