A consistent theme in Bishop's poems is childhood and growing up. She focuses on the specificity of her individual family by telling stories of her youth through her poems. The emotions that surrounded her childhood are clear to see. She wrote about the anxiety, unhappiness, and loneliness that she had experienced in her life. In the poem "In The Waiting Room," Bishop captures the fear of growth, specifically from adolescence to adulthood. In the poem, a young Bishop sits in the waiting room of a dentist's office. While reading and waiting, she envisions herself as her aunt. She is disgusted by grown women, happy as a young six-year-old girl in her own body. Becoming older and a woman rather than a girl horrifies her. Bishop communicates that simply being older is awful. The open-world and endless opportunities scar her. The poem's overall theme is fear, as it is the crucial emotion displayed.
