A pause meets a thought

I should not be alone
with these degenerate thoughts,
they throw me off my meticulously planned route.

Visiting hours would suffice
If I could just proportion them an allocated time,
just enough to keep me conscious and analytical,
but never so much that I visit the blackness.

Bi-weekly I could pull up
to the cold, iron gates
armed with tissues, tea and chocolate, perhaps
a trashy magazine to fill the space I will leave.

Confronting them face to face,
over the perfectly circular formica table,
I know their trembling will shake me.

They do not like my visits
as much as I dislike theirs
but our meeting is inevitable
for I am the pause that provokes them into waking.