Just one of many mental breaks of clarity found written on the wall, behind her bed.
PSilent Psych Ward
I dream of a time
before loud voices
I long for a time
before deadly vices
Swinging on a porch swing on the apocalyptic box
where calming breezes wipe clean static forces
stirring new gravity in my path of least resistance
Dare me to leap,
to catch air and soar
Force me to slice the bluegrass blades that pulse with every
thump, thump, thump of Zephyrus’ heart
Haunt me until day and night fall short of a few seconds,
which could have meant the difference
between health and wellness
And who will ever know my exhaustion, my torment?
Not the onlookers who snicker with fear
Not the blood brothers who cry for new cures
Not the little girl lost in the woman lost in the thunder and brimstone
residing in her faceless tenant
Only the enemy that I keep close
just the sower of the seed of imperfection
who holds my face in his hands
and my hand to my back
directing my eyes to the out door of normal and the in door of sanity
So matter-of-fact.
As we pile yellowed pages into no particular order and throw away the memories of others.
Laughter and smiles, coy glances and antics captured in black and white and muted colors fit in a broken down shoebox that could so easily be discarded without a thought or a lift of the lid.
Thoughts of emotions that need not surface now, are clouded in the gray-green dust that coats every inch, like magnetic shards of toxic metals that thicken the lungs and infect the sinuses.
Moldy and mildewed threads that drape the sepia-tone windows and faded, intricately patterned oriental rugs that fray and rip when walked on, hold the musty odor that tapers off with a slight, almost silent, scent of lily of the valley.
In her prison she scribbled on scraps of torn wallpaper and danced to the rhythmic banging of loose shudders and the creaking and scratching of limbs that went unpruned for decades.
She spoke in foreign tongues to the whiskered and winged critters that visited her in random intervals of time, separated by a single layer of glass and a double dose of fear.
In her bed, the tattered and torn death bed, that once reigned so regal in jewel tones and ornate carvings, lay embroidered kerchiefs that got their use and abuse in the angry states of love and loss that climaxed with her shrieks of this name and that name all made in vain.
She laid in that hellish mess of a life for 64 years before exhaling her final tobacco rich sigh and swallowing her final whiskey rich dose of pride.
In the loss of the worry that swirled around us like a November wind from the start of our youth to the end of our sentence, we gained a new concern in wondering, if in such a self-centered realm, could she find an answer to lead her to a higher ground or would she find a stone to tie to her leg and drown in the depths of her loathing and self-doting.
In silence we listen to the clock on the desk in the back bedroom chime four o’clock.
After we piled yellowed pages into no particular order, I turned and began my descent from the house, at a pace slow enough to hear him light the match and release it in a rush of sulfur, putting an end to the sentence.
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