Another Night

In the hospital waiting room
my father dozed
in a wheelchair, wrapped in a stained white sheet
to stave off the cold
blasting down from above.

My mother complained
about the wait,
the white noise,
the nurse's questions,
my father's stubbornness.

Six feet across from us
sat a woman with a bruise healing under one eye, 
and a very small girl
in a pink dress,
her tiny arm in a yellow sling.

The girl was solemn.
She turned to the woman and said,
"It's gonna be night-night time?"

The woman squinted out the window.
The glass and hoods of parked cars threw back hot white sunlight
that punched through the haze of the summer day.
"Silly," she said. "It's the middle of the afternoon."

The girl looked at my father,
then at her bruised arm,
then at her feet, and whispered,
"It's night-night time all day long."