Industrial Grade

The clinic is quiet. I’m watching the floor

where the grey-speckled tiles are starting to fray.

Someone spilled water by the exam room door

and it sits there in beads, refusing to stay.

In the corner, the glue has given up the fight,

and the edge of the sheet is a dry, yellow lip.

It’s seen forty years of this fluorescent light

and the weight of the people who stumble and slip.