December 2016

A poem written on the first night of a three-week stay at a psychiatric clinic

Neat blank check-boxes
Filled with unmeaning perfect x's
Perfectly planned hours
Filled with speakers
Some faux-excited
Some monotonously drain on
Deep conversations
And jokes that weakly
Draw from you a half-smile
Rooms never dark
Sounds never cease
Bars on the windows
Neutral identical beige beds flavoured
With homey accents
Restricting plastic pastel bracelets;
a world of information in less than a sentence
Wrists uniformly slit with the lines of a notebook
Nothing is secret
Nothing is sacred

Wondering who will still be alive at the end of the year
Wondering if you will still be alive at the end of the year

Hellcat (2016)