~VA Hospital, October 2019 (Thank you for your service)

These halls, these chairs, these walls
encasing whispered moans
and memories of wars
and those gone soldiers
that never made it home
to America, to sit here, to wait
on the doctor to see them
at the VA Hospital in Charleston.

I sit feeling, hearing the tones
of pain play like the keys
of a piano, dark and light —
Some pain a deep recessed dark.
Some pain a bright hard gash
of bright light open wound oozing
under the cover of wrinkled flesh
pale aged splotched skin
that holds the soldier of twenty
wrapped deep beneath the disguise
of age and time.

The waiting room of marbled browns
deep wood tone trim and calm colors
built to settle the mind and remove
the pain of war and living.

~Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com