Islanders

Choice is gone, chance too: nothing ever happens
save white rubber shrieking as a nurse shoots
away. She still has places to go. We have
the sitting room: vast, open, sunny, plush,
its chairs islands of slow sinkage.
Ours is a settlement of settlements, we are
settlers out of movement, mostly. Time
still passes, purr in the hands on the wall
but left to come and go without notice.

Some keep to the halls, on trajectories
lopped at either end, pointless too.
They tread their trepidation, hesitation,
they slipper, flip-flop, shuffle. I don’t know
names, only gaits. Only variations on movement
questioning itself. The sure-footed one,
and there’s always one, is still on her way,
still headed somewhere. I glance at the empty
chair beside me. Maybe she’ll get there.