He walks out, silently
into a world where no-one shows outrage –
it is not done, though each suppresses
the inner scream. The years go by.
Scalpel, scissors, dissection, cloth please nurse…
good, that’s all his love safely bottled
in a brine solution; they are his tears
which the law forbids him to cry.
And so the patient rises from the table,
says “thankyou” to the doctor,
and walks out into his
white-walled, pink-uniformed, blue-collared
sterile world, to join, in triumphant victory,
his mates at the pub.
Somewhere on the outside,
his wife is weeping.