held us all together
or made us all just one?
How I didn't know any
word for it how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
Here, the speaker suddenly emerges from her solipsism and feeling of derealization. The “it” is reality, a grounded reality shared by others and defined by facts (such as the fact that it is “February, 1918” and she is “in Worcester, Massachusetts”) and events that–no matter how seemingly absurd–provide some sort of communal meaning. In this instance, she is reentering a world defined by ongoing war. This could also imply that she has snapped out of a state of deep self-consciousness to a “default state” of experiencing reality through the senses, unquestioningly–a state that is arguably a necessary evil for one’s survival.
In the Waiting Room