Conversations carry on outside the grain-laminate door. Papers rustle. A phone rings with a staccato four-beat tone in the key of “E”. Lights hum.
I sit in the last examination room on the left.
A middle-aged Filipina in sky-blue scrubs measures my blood pressure. Her eyes widen. “Let me take it on your other arm,” she says. She straps the band. Pumps. Watches the mercury rise. Listens to my pulse.
Still high.
“The Doctor will be in soon,” she says, before leaving. I finish the 15-page introduction to The Essential Basho. More time passes.
The exam room door remains closed.
ringing ears
a wrinkled poster shows
“plants to avoid”
first published in Image Curve, February , 2018
Photograph from unsplash.com
for dVerse Poetry Pub’s Haibun Monday: Waiting (pubtended by guest pubtender Imelda)
Frank J. Tassone 
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