Bridget Hart

Sitting, waiting in a room that time forgot.

The clock ticks with a nervous twitch

In perpetual misery, lost in itself.

Spider plants adorn bleak shelves

Leaning languidly over the edge

As if threatening to dive. Drooped

With no want of help.

Tick, Tick, Tick

Red felt chairs neatly arranged

Crowd a long corner.

Besieging an oak finished face

Fortune lies at the bottom

Of the tissue box and old fame in

Magazines flipped through a thousand

Times – by idle fingers –

Tick, Tick, Tick

There are others here, stuck in the room

That time forgot.

They don’t look up

They sit fixed on reading,

Biting, picking, chewing fingernails.

Tick Tick, Tick

Flicking thumb on coffee lid

As breeze whistles under window frames

The world goes by outside,

Shines on old cassettes and its player

Black box, thick buttons waiting to click –

Tick , Tick, Tick

Time irritates and lends to hearing.

There goes lumbering boots on

Lumpy ramps, voices muffle as they

Travel into another room, Some of us

Have looked up; hopeful.

Tick, Tick, Tick,

Tock.

‘Jennifer?’