waiting room chairs

i feed the chairs until
they turn into deer. they have wanted
an escape for years. we end up 
in the parking lot outside the big
hospital place where everyone
is blue. a deer gets hit & instantly 
becomes a pile of carnations. 
i forget what carnations mean but
i am pretty sure they are not meant
for the sick. in a trash bag 
i gather them up so no one has to look
at this mistake. the remaining deer
are so eager. they steal bodies
from their horrors & say,
"you are not sick, you are just
in need of a different life." how many times
have i needed a different life?
my blood like carnations. the ghosts
without any teeth. i keep feeding the deer.
everyone thinks of liberation but not
of tending. someone will have
to keep the ghosts from going hungry.
someone will have to love the deer
or else another waiting room will arrive
with more terror than before. a big doctor
instead of a small one. my parents
used to make me go to sunday school.
one day we walked to the church 
to watch a sculptor carve a great mary statue.
there were deer watching from
the nearby fields. i wondered if
anyone else was looking at them. 
doctors' windows open in the sky.
i always hoped sunday school would give me
some big secret at the end. like they
would open a door & there god would
be not like a deer or a waiting room but
like a release. that never came.
the questions grew legs & doors.
i want my questions to bloom. 
we are told to wait so much that 
the waiting can start to almost feel holy.
it is not. there are trees. there are deer.
us too, with teeth in our skulls. 
a waiting place without any chairs
blown open like a harmonica room.
everyone in the violet crushed air. 
all the doors, gone. replaced with carnations
wrong as they may be.