The Clinic - Draft 2

[ChristopherSea]

The Clinic

Attending the clinic is the closest I get to comfort.
I find the number in a teen magazine, make the call

from a red phone box like a spy or a superhero
desperate to change into something magical.

The appointment is my first chance to tell, where I learn
entire words are missing from my vocabulary.

Still the women sits, listens, takes note of me.
I cherish the moment knowing beyond the white walls

there is no one to hear this broken story.
When I return to my strange adopted home,

outside is glorious summer, but the clinic lights
still blink fake brightness. I close my eyes,

let them work. The pain is the same,
a carving knife dicing its way through

parts of me that never knew a gentle touch.
But the clinic care for me and when they spit me

back into the summer city the sting of walking
cripples less than the ache of my closed mouth.

I like the poem overall. Finding a new doctor after moving (or in a unfamiliar venue) and then making the first appointment is intimidating and unnerving. I thought it interesting to search for what I assume is an ObGyn clinic in Teen Magazine, but it does express some teen desperation. That red Sir Gilbert Scott telephone kiosk is a classic image. Do they still have them in the UK? (I saw one in Bermuda). Carving knife and dicing is a curious pairing, but it works well for the butchery perception of a dilation and curettage procedure for a young woman. The poem is a bit clinical, having less of an emotional component, but it works with an 'in shock' or a pre/post-traumatic syndrome sense. You have a typo and some punctuation missing in the penultimate and closing lines: 'the clinic cares for me'. Then a 'comma' and another 'comma' after city I think (?):

But the clinic cares for me and, when they spit me
back into the summer city, the sting of walking...

This is not something one wants to go through alone, but this is certainly a common scenario. Effect work Stephanie./Chris