from “Mental Hospital: A Memoir”
I was a roll of sod: unplanted, emergent situation as I yellowed toward death. Bodily I was a drying thing, my parchedness a warm concussion. Roots found no purchase. My green undone into dust until no magic molecule could pill me back to lush.
*
The inexorable speed with which the world has moved since I first arrived spirals out of control. I am begging time to slow, to slow, to slow down. Amphetamine psychosis and its consequent hostility. I lash out badger-style at A-Wing’s head nurse. Taken down, dragged off by six burly men. They bring me to a dark lockdown with two shots. No matter how hard a patient is fighting, they will always get still when it is time for a shot.
*
I wake up in a wheelchair. I wake up on display. There are staff members crowding for a look, a touch, a set of vitals. I am being wheeled from the gym to the ward. Twice I crawl out of the chair to push my face into the dirt. So hot I could burn. If I could just get way, way down underground I might get cool. Finally, someone holds my shoulders until I am in my room. Led to bed, my tongue is made—my head is made of cinders.
*
After the seizure I am on ward hold again. The nurses assure me that this is not a punishment. Got to keep a close eye, lest I convulse in the wrong place at the wrong time out on campus pass with a Camel in my mouth, face-first into the pond, gurgle, bubble, flatline. So I try to move slow around the ward. Keep close to the wall with a hand on the banister. I try to stay at least half the day out of bed. I try to stay positive, but I don’t.
*
Latchhook puppy on the wall of the art room. Beside it, a purple cardboard snap-dragon yawns like a vagina. In the gym, dodgeballs hit the floor with a wet rubber slap. Up the hall from that the canteen is serving ice cream sundaes. Everything as it should be. Everything as it must be. I open the paper to the obituaries. I never knew these people, and now I never will. I sigh my way through stringing beads on stretchy elastic to brighten my wrist. Tedium and decaf. Come close, come close, come see the sun reflected in my newly hopeful eye.
