by Donal Mahoney
In the waiting room, I squeeze
this old rosary a nun gave me
the day I got back from Iraq.
I was still in a daze on a gurney
and I still had sand in my hair.
Some of it remains, no matter
how many showers I take.
Sand from Iraq lingers, I'm told,
until you go bald, and then
you are able to concentrate
on other things.
What might they be, I wonder.
But today, in this waiting room,
I squeeze the rosary tighter
when I hear, louder than
the gunshots crackling in my dreams,
the real screams of that little boy
right over there, the one who's
rapped his elbow off the radiator.
Lord, listen to him scream!
Each week he comes with his mother
for her follow-up appointment.
He sounds like the jet
that takes me back at night
to that little village in Iraq
where the sand puffs up
in mushroom clouds
above the bullets
as the children scream
in their hovels louder
than that little boy
screaming over there.
Maybe everyone
in this waiting room
listening to him scream
can come with me now
to that village in Iraq.
Sitting here, I know
that boy's pain so well
that in my fist
this rosary no longer
knows my prayers.