Visiting Hours

I smile and ask him if he is comfortable.

Empty, white, impersonal walls spread out
from behind a bed covered in the same
impersonal bed sheets.
The only color comes from the television
(even the medicine pumped into his arm is clear).
But his room is full of people,
grasping his hand and loving him.
Down the hall and to the right there is a man
(with the same white-walled room)
who has no visitors to ask if he is comfortable.
But I am not thinking about this man and his loneliness-
I am concentrated only who I am here to see
and the tube in his arm that travels to the IV.
I smile and ask him if he is comfortable.