“Quarantine Diaries,” by David Garyan (Day 46)

Quarantine Diaries – Day 46 April 29th, 2020

Trento, Italy

Remedy for Pain

Unlike libraries, where people try not to speak, silence comes easy in the waiting room ... no, it comes easy in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.

People’s downward expressions are perfectly arranged like classics— everyone knows them but they haven’t mattered in years.

The slow breaths spread like law students, or better yet, young minds of justice turning thin pages. But maybe they're just thin pages of codes on domestic relations. What could anyone know about divorce and raising children?

And why do clocks always hang in places where you should wait? Is it so necessary to count your biology—

to know it precisely when

you must see the person trying to keep you alive?

Ah, medicine, you’re not the gardener who can bury the dead. People sit and wait for your help, but what’s the answer? When the problem can only have words on the left side of the equal sign, no formula(ry) is coming to help.

Next time you’re in a small room, expecting people in white coats, pay closer attention. The whole history of mankind is written there— on the closed eyes of those who aren’t asleep.