I first notice the fog, unexpected
on the inside of a windshield,
a question mark
along the run-on sentence of parked cars, and,
with a snap, you are there,
wrapped in a bag in the back
seat with parking patrol on the prowl,
but they’re not so keen, blindly
driving by in a kind ignorance,
and I don’t see you either,
only your warm breath
caught at the glass,
and all I have are commas,
Christopher Schifeling is a geriatric and palliative-care physician in Denver. He hosts the healthcare-humanities podcast Auscultation. His creative work has been featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine, Intima and Pulse.
“Many of my clinic patients are living out of their cars. I know this about them, just as I know the results of their A1C tests (which measure their average blood-sugar levels) to the tenth decimal place. The encounter in the poem took me a step closer to this experience.”
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1 thought on “Neighbor”
As a retired English teacher, I admire your creative use of punctuation.