A description of an instant.

Oh god! It was so comforting to see that look in someone else's eyes. So relieving. I'll never be able to explain it. It wasn't a hopeful look at all. It wasn't a trusting look. Only the most discerning of eyes could see the love. You see, it is all like a dream. Words, they echo off my lips. The truest most uncensored words. "She's just a little too far to hear me."

I have no faith.

It is freedom.

I used to be scared because I didn't believe in things. Now I'm just grateful.
I layed on the couch and stared up at the ceiling and all at once it hit me.
I had been thinking.
And thinking.
And suddenly it was all blurred together.

And suddenly everything was just so
Beautiful!

And my hands dig into the fibers of the sofa.
And I can feel all around the signs of my existence.
Though I do not exist.
I am not lonely.
I am so happy!

I am so free!

But the summer...

Shall I read to you? My eyes are tired but I think I can bear it... just one more chapter until your eyelids are heavy. "Vous savez que ne vous parlez pas," you said. And I agreed. The strong teeth of life bit into my ambition, cut it short. Ambition? Ambulatory hopes that I'd collected. Light into darkness, darkness into light... it's always some variance thereof.The summer was extraordinary.They upped my dosage days ago and I felt a flood of colour enter my brain as I brushed my teeth this morning. The summer was good... we had a good time. You look so pretty there, sleeping, like a little angel. In the winter you were in charge of putting more logs on the fire. The winter was hard this year.You look like a child.Do you remember the time I swam to that lighthouse? I told you I was dreaming, but I think I was awake. The winter was hard, but the summer.

Things I find Interesting.

bel esprit
Institut National des Sciences Appliquées
Parallel Factor Analysis
gentamicin-resistant Acinetobacter baumanii
ventriculomegaly
vincristine
Quetiapine
semantic relatedness
Neoplatonism
sodality

Goals.

AllegoryAlliterationAllusionAmplificationAnagramAnalogyAnaphoraanastropheAnthropomorphismAnimal related wordsAntithesisAphorismApostrophe/AUTHORIAL INTRUSIONAssonanceBibliomancyCacophonyCaesuraCharacterizationChiasmusConflictConnotationConsonanceDenotationDictionEkphrasticEmulationEpithetEuphonyFlashbackForeshadowingHyperboleImageryInternal RhymeInversionIronyMetaphorMetonymyMotifMoodNegative CapabilityNemesisOxymoronOnomatopoeiaParadoxPathetic FallacyPeriodic StructurePersonificationPoint of ViewPlotPolysyndetonPortmanteauPunsRhyme SchemeRhythm & RhymeSatireSettingSimileStanzaStream of ConsciousnessSymbolSynecdocheSyntaxThemeToneTragedyVerisimilitudeVerse

Constance.

Broken by distortion, the street flew over eternal gratitude, dripped from her atomic existence.Metal scorched for them, the root in futures not yet tongued by a love that kills.Desultory spirals, the nexus of a lost dialect's adrenaline shimmering in the glow, shorn of its electric negation.Their meander scrawled the legend of now on the sky.Looming in silent circuitry spelled a vivid realm to its breaking point,grand narratives the key to sinew.The vapid null of her vowels,skeletons and synchronicity piled atop bleeding, grey slabs of text:busily prepared to throw hallelujah's process to daylight.Knee-deep in a kiss that moves closer.Dreaming a billion oceans torn from the first day's oldest ceremony,nothing at all must be apart.Bells keep plasma at bay, polyphony drips from money.A coin fell from this bitter chemical exchange.Cascades known by heart deny her tissue as cognitive mercybecause after all the brilliant fires lit for the sake of economics,passion has become a trigger again,a disgust for psychology and its lost husbands and gang-raped verbs.Writing to sixty-two revolutionsinterested in screenplays from the cosmos,solitude's meridian,empty dynamics.It's written by drips of linger,gasped union poking days into greased motions.Enamor rains its centrifugal cry, deadly rainbows that crevice between their skulls.Trees conversed with her when he wasn't around,told her how words could dream meanings gained and meanings lostwithout ever coming to the cusp of insanity.Variants continue to walk,a loving search in sacks of E minor and triangles.She is porcelain's air stranded on an excerpt of unruly, curious escape.Compressed with sweet, heathenly vice and pouring its entropy wink to the interface.Ionizing velvet for a time of delusion.Invisible on a million fingertips,painting many years of pain before his ellipse stopped ringing;vertical nooks of starlight activity for two.Vertigo sifted through them, shared whistles from long ago,the radio and a portrait displaying the swirl of immense shades of cellophane.Perfect joy extracts a lid of vision without any splash,the hiss that sinks into opiate, its diagrammed paraphrase and belief.Media like all else is false, he sipped at his dread's steaming manumit as she typed impossibly green. The lines of her shoulder laughed at the nebulous bruise left in her dream,a lightning flash at how the crusade became his unhinged torso.Her river will never be year zero adornedwhen they genuflect before phantasms and wet visionsthat returned anarchy back to a breeze.

Blindness.

I imagine a type of freedom beyond the waning lights,pretty faces pointed at in stark terror by emaciated fingers,colourless metaphors for astrology.It lounges amongst wisps of hairthat manage to bury a mountain of laughterunder the moon's illustrated sequel,every fibre alive in the passing linearity.Once sacred, now separate and sober as broken glass,the knees of heredity have jaundiced twice this evening,monotony and the lunar melding with the clear applauseusually reserved for a new symphony,(one that just stares blankly into the sun's blinding glare without ever blinking.)

Bitter.

Super human decay that wanders the streets with cannibal intentions,various forms of light blind the soft whispers of neon.When we stop seeing the truth we recognize the supertruth. Men, created equally, with equal distances between hearts and mouths.Slavery within bivouacs created from dread.A susurrus rises in our headsas a breath rises in our chests.All we've ever known of freedom is within these moments.

Cancelled.

There were four of us in the room when it happened. Even Sean’s cavalier wit couldn’t lend levity to the gravity of the evening; and we all walked away shaken-- slightly worse for the wear. I try sometimes to remember what led up to events of the evening. It’s hard to do. I try to remember backwards, like counting down in my head, 9.. 8.. 7.. 6..; I can’t get back to one, though. Maybe there was no particular catalyst to trace back to. (And sometimes I trace back through my memory like my fingers over the dried layers of paint on the piece that you called "Epiphany," wanting so much to peel layer after layer off to find the sketch that it all started with.)What were you looking at when it happened? I never asked you that. I was focusing on a cancelled check, laying on the ground next to a pocket watch, made out to "Cash" in the amount of seventy-five dollars. I had been thinking about what that money had been spent on, and also how neat the stamp looked. No visible smudges. And I’ve since then thought about how I felt about as cancelled as that check was, but my stamp wasn’t nearly as clean.Tuesday morning it was cold. I woke up and rolled over and Kendra was shivering. I put my hand to her arm, and her skin was cool to the touch. It was eerie. Before I got up I covered her with a blanket and rubbed her arms over and over hoping that the friction would warm her. She stirred only slightly, and I paused to watch her eyes flutter under her lids. She dreams deeply and keeps a journal of the tales that her brain drums up in her slumber. I've done my best to provide a nice life for her. We live modestly but I think that she's happy.And then I called you, and you said that it was warm in California. For a brief moment I thought of packing everything up and moving. I thought of the boxes stacked in the hallway. But when I thought of individually wrapping each one of Kendra's handpainted ceramic molds, I got overwhelmed. I told you that I didn't think that I could live in the same state as you. You agreed that it probably wasn't a good idea.I've tried to tell Kendra what happened that night. There are times, though few and far between, that she will catch me remembering backwards. When I am lost in thought, she asks me what's on my mind, and I try to spit it out but I am unable to. I can tell that she knows that I'm keeping something from her, and that it bothers her. I save my phone calls to you for the early morning when she is still asleep, worried that she will hear the ease in my voice when I speak to you. The lack of hesitation. Neil's been doing okay for himself, too. I see him occasionally; he works at a department store in the mall selling men's suits. When I run into him, we sit and share a meal in the food court. He gets sushi from the Japanese place, and I get coffee. He always politely asks about Kendra, although I can still hear the residual frustration in his voice that things between us didn't work out. He doesn't bring you up very often. I wonder what Neil was looking at. I sometimes think that he was looking at something that was more interesting than a cancelled check. Maybe he was looking at the television screen. I remember hearing the fuzz in the background. Maybe in that instant we became permanently fused with what we were focusing on. I'm a cancelled check, Neil is white noise. If this is the case, I imagine that your eyes were aimed out the window at the stars that seemed extra bright that night.I wanted to tell you about Sean earlier but I didn't know how. I knew that there was no way that you'd be able to make the funeral; the arrangements were made quickly and with very little concern for what he would have wanted. His parents felt disgraced by his suicide. They buried him in a blue pin-stripe suit that he surely wouldn't have worn under any other circumstances. The ceremony was rife with trite, conventional rites. I asked Kendra to stay home, and she wearily obliged. Neil and I sat in the back holding hands. Sean's sister talked to us breifly outside the church. She somberly recounted the tale of how sick he'd been lately, and I bit my tongue as Neil told her how nice the ceremony had been. When we got into the car, I turned to look at Neil and I said, plainly, "He was looking right at it."Neil nodded, put the car in gear, and drove me home in silence.I've come to realize that though our lives speak of that night everyday, we will never discuss it aloud. It's a secret that we all share with the past. I'm learning to tuck it away. I hope that one day Kendra and I can come out to see you, and finally meet your wife and children.Please keep your eyes to the stars.

Fiction.

Fiction? Friction. Strong convictions. I'll shatter all of your predictions, Fill your head with contractions, Evict them with this benediction: perfect form and proper diction, we see our way through these afflictionsand blindly stifle our addictions by setting up interdictions and turning our eyes away from the fire.

Objection! Cancel your affection,It reeks of absolute perfection Sponsors my new ressurection Bears witness to my defection, Eviscerates my recollection! Excuse me for my interjection, but I've dissected my reflectionand found an orthomorphic projection of my true desire.

Attraction to the smallest fraction,Can't free myself of this distraction. Contention with constant protraction, (I see it in your reaction). I'm happy with our pure abstraction; with no addition or subtraction... (I want to use 'calefaction') I offer, humbly, this redaction:of everything I've said prior.

Mexico.

At two-thirty in the afternoon we were just waking up. We had spent the previous night trying to talk to God and counting the doors in the hallways of our perceptions. I rolled over, rubbed my temples, and opened the notebook that was laying on the bed. I started reading aloud from it. "Amitryptilline dreams, locked in a chemical embrace, your smile radiates warmth in a higher frequency..."You rolled over, eyes still closed, and a smirk came over your face. We both giggled as I shut the notebook. We had realized a long time ago that the poetry that we wrote under the influence was humourous, only to be taken seriously by open-mic-goers at suburban coffee houses. To them, it was ingenius.I got up and walked to the kitchenette. I was thankful that I had remembered to set the coffeemaker to automatically make a pot of coffee at eleven in the morning. It was cold by then, but it was caffeine, and I drank two cups in rapid succession. We had both taken a few days off work. It was Sunday afternoon, and we had both worked long shifts on Saturday. After work we had come directly home and dropped, wanting to start our mini-vacation off right. I poured a cup of coffee for you and set it on the coffee table. You had pulled a pillow over your face, and I wrestled it out of your hands. "Get up," I said, "even if it's just long enough to have some coffee." You opened your eyes I couldn't help but smile. We both started laughing again.I laid back down and curled myself into a ball at the bottom of the pullout couchbed. My cat sauntered over and laid next to me. I started to sing her a little song as I pet her in long strokes. I could still feel traces of cool electricity in my fingers."We should drive to Mexico," I said, casually. "Where would we get the money to do that?" you asked.I loved the fact that you had actually heard me. I had been waiting my whole life for someone to hear me. I hadn't been serious when I said it; in fact, I was barely cognisant of what I had said. Your response is the only thing that made me give it a second thought."I have money in a jar," I said. You looked at me, deliberately."Enough to get us to Mexico?""Sure," I said."Well, then let's go."
Only half-aware of myself, I collected a few items together and threw them in a backpack. We weren't really going to Mexico, so I packed light. You sat around smoking. When my bag was packed I sat next to you and flipped the notebook open again. "What the hell were we thinking?" Again, we erupted in laughter.When the laughter stopped I looked into your eyes. "What the hell were we thinking?" Your eyes widened. "I don't know. What in the hell WERE we thinking?"

"We were right."

Rummage Sale.

It was strange to move to a place that felt so much like home. He'd never been here before, but had randomly found this tiny city on a map that a friend had given him the day he'd woken up. Just chance, maybe, that he had noticed the tiny little name; the strangely attractively shaped municipality, among a series of bigger cities that undoubtedly had much more to offer to anyone else that was looking for a place to reside. He unpacked slowly. Boxes, stacked to the ceiling. All over the room. He didn't want to take everything out at once, but to ease into habitation. Let the place get to know him.
He hadn't planned on leaving. The last city was fine. Fine, just fine; until the Rummage Sale. He was a little down on his luck, sure; but the Rummage Sale was to change all that. He woke up early in the morning and collected all of the things that he owned and brought them down to the street below. He set up tables and slowly layed out his wares: all of the most precious things that he had collected over each one of his years. He smiled to himself at his collection. Surely, surely, yes; Yes, surely the things that he had found so valuable would indeed be valuable to others. He checked over each of the items, remembering when and where he picked each one up. Some of the memories made him smile, some of them chilled him with melancholy, but seeing them all layed out there on the tables gave him a sense of pride. He'd collected these things, these were HIS things.
He fastidiously penned a large cardboard sign with the letters FOR SALE and hung it neatly above his tables, from a pole that was thick with old staples and nails. He had done this before, laid everything out. It had helped him out of some bad situations. He was indeed in a bad situation that day; he had begun to feel wretched and despicable, but something about looking over the stock he set up made him feel more confident. It would be a good day. He sat in his tiny green and white folding chair and waited for her to come by.
And he sat. The sun rose higher in the sky, and he looked up and down the street for signs of her presence. It was taking longer than usual, her arrival. He remembered the first few Rummage Sales he had: she had been there so early, excited to look over the things he had set out. She always wanted to be the first to see his treasures. He had been captivated by this; flattered that she took such a shine to a bunch of old junk that he'd collected. At least, back then it seemed like a bunch of old junk. Now he knew better.
At about quarter after eleven a shadow fell over the display. He looked up and saw her face. He smiled widely, and she nodded at him. "I'm glad you're here," he said, "I've been waiting for you.""I can't stay long," she said, in a low drone. "I've so many things to do and see today. But I will be back a little later to look over your things." He looked at her blithely, feeling quite fortunate that even with the many things that she had to do and see she was planning to stop back to see him.
"I'll be here, all day." She nodded at him and continued down the street.
He took the time after she left to go through his collection, dusting and shining each article intricately. He made sure that the best side of each piece was facing forward. He took pride in the fact that he had so much more to display this time around, and placed some of the bigger, newer items towards the front of the display. He walked out into the street and looked at the arrangement, and smiled to himself. He knew that when she got a good look at what he had to offer she would undoubtedly be just as excited as that first day.
After an hour of tidying up, he sat down next to his array and waited. Everything was arranged just so, it would be perfect for when she came back. Then it happened. The sky grew dark. Clouds began to roll in from the distance and the air was heavy with water. He saw a couple streaks of lightning scatter across the sky. In an instant he was reminded of the time that he was punched square-in-the-nose in the fifth grade by Eugene Monroe because he had said some things out loud that he should have kept to himself. The lightning cracked again; this time trailed by a large roar of thunder. He looked up at the sky, feeling hapless. Another flash,closer, and he counted... One-onethousand-two-onethousand-thr... BOOM! Within a few seconds the sky opened up and rain came down. Under any other circumstances, he'd be thankful for the rain. It was a warm day, and in the distance, in a break in the clouds, the sun shone through and created a prism that seemed to shine right down on most of the city. He noticed the beauty, but not for long. He rushed to try to cover his display, taking great care to protect the things that he felt were the most valuable. He took several things and put them under the tables, and when he was relatively sure that most of his possessions were safe he took cover himself. The rain didn't last long, thankfully, and he was able to walk back out and begin anew setting everything just right. He looked at the sign that he had meticulously lettered; each letter seemed to be melting from the sign right down the pole. He cursed loudly as he walked over to take the sign down.
Just as he got the sign into his hands, she walked up again. He turned to face her. The black paint from the soggy sign was dripping down and staining his clothing. He set the sign down and reached out to take her hand, to bring her to the tables. She took one look at his inky hand and then glanced at the tables, noting that most of his display was now underneath them in haphazard piles. "Maybe you're not ready for me yet," she laughed, "I could come back later when you have things cleaned up a little better." He smiled gratefully at her.
"Yes, please," he said, "Come back in just a bit. I'll be all ready. Just give me a little bit of time to get this stuff together. You won't be disappointed." She nodded and grinned and continued on her way.
He spent the next few hours cleaning up the mess the damned storm had caused. He took each item and dried it completely, arranged each piece just-so, and then found a new, clean piece of cardboard and made a new sign. This sign was even nicer than the last.
When he was done cleaning up the mess, he again walked out to the street to take a glimpse of his collection. He smiled to himself, and sighed, at the expert way he was able to arrange each piece to create a display of everything that he had collected, such a telling display. He could look at the whole thing and see himself so clearly, and then focus in on each of the small particles and see how it was built. He was proud, and he was sure that he had done well.
Just afore sundown, when the clouds hung low in checkered patterns in the sky, and the sunlight was a golden-orange that shone richly down on his tables, she arrived again. He couldn't believe his luck. The way the sun glowed caused glints of light to refract from his possesions, calling attention to some of the gems that he displayed. She stood back to behold the scene before her, and then slowly walked up to the table to take stock of it's individual facets. As she fingered each of the treasures, he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, head held high, beaming from ear to ear, waiting for her reaction. He noticed the way she touched each thing; he noticed the way that the sun shone on her hair, showing glints of red through the rich brown. It seemed to him to resemble a halo, completely surrounding her angelic face. The way his treasures reflected in her eyes made them seem all the more beautiful to him. She moved slowly down the line, inspecting each small piece.
When at the end of his display she turned to face him. He straightened up and looked into her eyes. "Well?"
She smiled and turned her eyes to the ground. He waited. When she looked back up, he noticed that there were tears brimming in her eyes. One of them spilled over the edge and rolled down her cheek. She was still trying to smile.
"I don't think there's anything I want here."
His eyes widened. He had been sure. "Really?"
"I don't see anything."
A long pause. He sucked as much breath in as he could, until his lungs felt as if they would explode. He held it until he thought he might pass out, and then let the breath out sharply. "Okay."
She turned her back to him and started to walk away. He watched as her soft footfalls carried her further and further down the road until he couldn't make out her shape. He then turned to the tables and stared for a long time. The sun had gone down and it was hard to make out the exact shape of his posessions. He hurriedly grabbed items from the tables and put them into the large containers he had been saving them in. Soon his display was broken down and packed up and labeled in shorthand that only he could make out.
He went inside and slept. And slept...
And when he awoke, a friend was there. With a map; a map of all of the different cities. And instantly, his eyes found this city. He packed everything up that day and drove until he found his new home. It was strange to move to a place that felt so much like home. But now he was here and the place was learning him and he was keeping his boxes packed but he was thinking that soon, maybe real soon, he might want to have another Rummage Sale...

Sequel.

She wrote a sequel to my life. Black ink on gray newsprint; tiny neat letters that spelled out a story that I wasn't willing to tell. Inspired by my premature death, she put pen to paper daily. Her story opened with me waking up, nose bloodied. The car I had arrived in was still idling, and was damn near out of gas. I stood up, stumbled through the trash-littered apartment. I almost lost my balance by the entrance and grasped at a wall, leaving a series of crimson fingerprints on the face of some dead rock star. Regaining composure, I unlatched the door and walked onto the balcony. The sun instantly spit it's bile into my eyes. I doubled over and wretched but my empty stomach expelled only air.
She considered writing in a revelation but decided against it; my character was unaware that she had been resurrected. She felt anything but lucky.
Head pounding, I got into my car and drove less than a mile to my home. I stumbled into my room and fell onto my bed and slept for what seemed like days. The rest of the first chapter was filled with romantic prose about the "new lease on life" that I had been given. It was trite and uneventful, until a phone call roused me from my slumber. It is with this phone call that the joke began. I admit, I had set her up for quite the punchline.
She gave me life but took everything else away.

We gotta talk.

The night that she spoke candidly to me about her concerns I was heavily sedated and sprawled across a coffee table where I had finally come to a rest after having spent several hours pacing back and forth through the room, spitting words into the air to watch them rise above my head like opalescent bubbles and pop sloppily, leaving traces of their existence in the form of slimy trails on the surrounding furniture. "I'm sick, you know.""Yes, I know.""We haven't talked about it yet, but I think that we should.""Go.""Are you listening to me?""Yes, go.""Well, I'm worried about what's going to happen."A lengthy silence. "What do you mean?" I asked her. I stood up and tried to soberly adjust myself and take a proper seat on the couch. She deserved my attention in this matter, and although I would have paid just as much attention laying on the table, I knew that she would appreciate my attempt at listening to her in a more orthodox position."Do you remember when we went to Dubuque and we stopped at that grocery store and got all of those pieces of fruit and ate them in the parking lot?" I nodded. I had woken up abruptly that night, from a dream where we were eating a peach, and had insisted that we go to the store to get some fresh fruit. She looked at me strange when I passed the 24-hour convenience store and got onto the interstate. And we drove, for four-and-a-half hours, leaving the right lane only to pass slow cars. She said nothing, the car was silent. I finally put on my directional, and got off on a dimly lit street. We drove about ten miles through the town, until a lighted sign appeared before us. The grocery store had just opened. I parked and skipped towards the door, marched down the aisle to the produce section and picked several individual pieces of fruit. I skipped to a register, paid for them, all this with her following close behind me. We walked out and sat against the side of the building staring up at the horizon as the sun started to come up. I took a bite out of the peach. "This is exactly what it was like," said i, between juicy bites. She took a bite, and just as in the dream a little trickle of juice collected on her bottom lip.She smiled, and I watched the sun shine through her hair, highlighting glints of red in her black-in-any-other light hair. She wasn't as excited as I was about the trip, and I could tell this was another time that she was following me against her better judgement. She was the voice of reason in the back of my head; or maybe I was the spirit of adventure in hers."Things like that can't happen,anymore, you know." I concentrated on her voice. I knew that soon she would start a new medication, something to help her sleep. Something that would make her better. She was worried about what would happen to me through her healing process. Her doctors concurred that I was part of the problem; they had even talked to me about it. "For her sake, we all think it's best that you let her rest. She needs to sleep. She needs to separate herself from you emotionally, and if you really love her you will try to let her stick to her new routine."I scoffed at their assertion that they knew what she needed more than I did. When you are around someone enough you get to know what they need. I had been around her for a long time and watched her thrive and watched her fail; the latter more than the former. I knew the optimum conditions for her health. She seemed the most healthy when she was happy, and I made her happy. I felt like making a case for myself, but when I closed my eyes I couldn't think of anything to say. "If I go," I said, "what do you think you will miss the most about me?"She took a few minutes to think and then spoke up. "Rollerskating. In the house, to that record you got from that place in San Francisco with all the "Top Disco Hits" on it. Even though I hate disco! I'll miss your words, I'll miss your songs. I'll miss your paintings laying all around the place. I'll miss the messes you make when you're in a bad mood. I'll miss the messes you make when you're in a good mood. I'll miss your snow angels and all of the tiny triangles you draw on the bathroom mirror... I'll miss the books that you leave lying around, the highlighted passages and the dog-ears and the little notes."I smiled to myself. "Those are nice things. But, what won't you miss?""I need some fucking sleep. I need some fucking sanity. And it's not that I'm choosing other people over you, but my friends don't like you so much. They don't understand you. To put it bluntly, you annoy them."She was telling me something I already knew. She tried not to bring me out when she was with others, but every once in awhile I would follow her and surprise her. She always seemed a little off-put, maybe even embarassed. "I've known you longer.""I know," she said, "but something's gotta give. They all can't be wrong.""What do you think it will be like without me?" I tried to visualize it but couldn't. She seemed to have a hard time concieving it, too. "It'll be quiet, I think." She looked sad, but resolved. "I was supposed to start the medication tomorrow but I think I might start tonight." I must have looked shocked. She got up and walked into the bathroom. She took an amber pill bottle from the medicine cabinet, and as she slid the mirror closed she traced her fingers over the little triangles. She looked at me and placed a pill on her tongue and all I could do was watch. I knew that soon I would feel fuzzy. I knew that soon I would flicker out into static on a television screen and that slowly the white noise would get softer and softer and that then.. then, I would disappear.

Dyer Situation

"I can't legally inform your mother of your drug use, but it would be beneficial to your recovery if you were to tell her."I was sitting in a chair in a small, nondescript office on the fourth floor of St. Margaret Mercy Hospital in Dyer, Indiana. A-wing. I'd had a rough 24 hours, and I could only think about the fact that I really wanted a cigarette. My head was screaming, and I wanted to go back to sleep. I stared, slack-jawed, at the woman before me. I found it hard to believe that she was put in charge of my mental health. She had a thick Middle Eastern accent, which made it hard for me to understand the questions she asked me. It didn't help that I couldn't focus at all. She smiled pleasantly at me, and I was compelled to tell her to shove her fake smile up her ass. She had asked many a condescending question, and I couldn't help but laugh at how trite the entire situation was.I had landed myself in the hospital by chance. I had spent the weekend with at my cousin's house, watching her kids. She was not too much older than me, and generally allowed me to do whatever I wanted. She usually bought me alcohol and cigarettes, and let me take her car wherever I wanted. On Sunday night, she drove me home. While we were in the car, I fumbled through my famousgreenarmybag, looking for my cigarettes. As I clumsily shifted the contents of my bag around, a couple of pottery tools fell from the bag onto the floor. I picked them up, and she gasped. "What are those, Teri?"I explained that they were just art tools, and she seemed to accept that answer.I got home, went in my room, and locked the door. I picked up the phone and called my then sort-of-boyfriend, Elliot. He had moved to Atlanta. We talked for awhile, and I told him that I was feeling pretty depressed. We used to read books to eachother over the phone. He read me a passage from Camus' The Plague. I told him that I wasn't feeling very optimistic, and nonchalantly started swallowing pills from a little bottle sitting on my bookcase. I put on a Mazzy Star CD, and listened to "Into Dust" on repeat. Elliot told me that it would be okay, that it would only be a couple more years until we were out of high school. That we could go to the same college and finally live in the same city again. I told him that a lot could change in a couple of years, (and I turned out to be right.)I turned all the lights off in the room, and instantly I was surrounded by a galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars. I told Elliot that I loved him, and asked him if he could just talk to me until I fell asleep. He agreed. I reached into my pillowcase and pulled out a knife that I kept there and started to run it against my left wrist. I pushed a little harder with each pass, until finally I pushed as hard as I could. Elliot heard me gasp and asked what happened. "Nothing," I said.I was already tired from taking the painkillers. I tossed the knife to the floor and started singing along to the song. Five minutes couldn't have passed before there was a knock, and then a bang on the door. "Teri, open the fucking door right now. Get the fuck out here." It was my mother's gruff voice, pulling me out of the trance that I had fallen into and briefly back into reality. I wasn't about the open the door. A few minutes later there was a loud crash, and then a cracking sound, as my mother hurled herself full-force into the door. The door flew open, and my mom said "Hang up the fucking phone. Get your shit together. You're going to Dyer."The next few minutes were a blur. I remember telling Elliot I would call him back, and him asking "Are you okay? Is she drunk?" I hung up the phone. Moments later the phone was ringing again, and I was being carried kicking and crying from my bedroom. I kept saying, over and over again. "I'm okay, ma. I'm fine. Just leave me alone."My mom was screaming at me. "Where the fuck is all that blood coming from?""It's alright Ma, I'm only bleeding."Somehow I ended up in the back of my cousin's minivan, sans seats. I laid still for awhile as my mom searched my body to find the bleeding tear on my wrist. "What the fuck is wrong with you, you little brat?" She hissed and swore at me as she wrapped my wrist with a t-shirt and jumped into the passenger seat of the van. My cousin got into the drivers seat and looked in the rearview mirror at me. "I'm sorry, Teri, I just don't want you to hurt yourself. Those knives that were in your bag really scared me."I tried to argue that they were only sculpting tools, but the wound on my wrist told my mother a different story.I don't remember the drive to the hospital. I think I fell asleep. When we got there, I tried to run down a path towards a retention pond that was made to look very lovely. I don't know what I was thinking. Soon a couple of male RNs had me in their arms, and then tied down to a gurney. They marked me down as "Resisting Admittance." That turned out to be a curse.
Rule#1In the mental health industry, there's nothing worse than a person who doesn't think they need help.
Soon I had been wheeled into a triage area, where they used a small pen-shaped tool to cauterize the veins in my left wrist, which produced the most awful smell I could imagine. I couldn't feel any pain, until they started to pump my stomach.I kept coming in and out of consciousness. I felt annoyed. All I wanted to do was just curl up and sleep.After this whole ordeal they ushered me into a room, where both of my parents were sitting. I was annoyed that my mother had called my father and worried him needlessly. Soon, a nice woman came in and asked me a battery of questions. I told her that I didn't know if I would answer them honestly if my parents were sitting there listening to my responses. My mother said, abrasively, "What the hell would you have to hide anything from me for?" The interviewer looked at me, almost sympathetically, and moved on with the line of questioning.
I was embarassed to answer a lot of the questions honestly in front of my father. I had always tried to hide my depression from him, and any other signs that I was at all fucked up. I knew that he would take it personally, as if it were his fault for my state. Of all the questions asked in that initial interview, I only answered two of them slightly truthfully. The first one was, "Have you ever used any recreational drugs?"
I thought about all of the tests they were probably running on me at that very moment, and in my weary state, panicked about the fact that I had done acid very recently. I remembered hearing a story, though, that LSD could stay in your system for a very long time, so I answered obscurely."I did acid once. Years ago."My mother stood up from her seat at once, and shouted at me. "Fucking acid? Of all the drugs you could choose? You picked acid? What the fuck is wrong with you? That shit could kill you instantly!" I was thankful that I hadn't admitted to the truth. The nice lady asking the questions politely asked my mom to take her seat. I couldn't even look at my father.
The only other question that I answered somewhat honestly to out of the 150+ questions I was asked was "Are you sad?"
"What the hell do you think, lady?" I said, monotonely. "Everyone is sad."
After the questions they allowed me to go out into the waiting room and talk to my family while they were preparing to take me upstairs. My cousin was there, and kept apologizing. My dad told me that he didn't think I'd have to stay for very long, and hugged me. My favorite aunt was there and told me that she'd bring me cookies. It was almost midnight. Soon a nurse came to get me and walked me into an elevator. My family had to stay behind. In the elevator ride up, I tried to break the silence with a bit of levity. "Nice night we're having, eh?" The nurse gave me a sideways glance and then continued to look forward. "Tough crowd," I said, derisively.
When we arrived on the fourth floor, she led me to a door that she had to be buzzed into. As we walked down a hallway, we passed a room where a boy was being administered a shot. I briefly made eye contact with the boy, and he started screaming. "That girl just looked at me and gave me AIDS!" The nurse that was tending to him tried to quiet him down. "Eric," she said, "that girl does not have AIDS and you already know that you can't get AIDs from someone just looking at you." I was somewhat amused by this crazy kid, and I shouted down the hallways, "I do too have AIDS!"
I heard a bunch of yelling again. My guide was not amused.
I was led to a room where I was instructed to take all of my clothes off. I'm a tad gymnophobic, and was very uncomfortable with this suggestion. I also knew that taking off even one layer of clothing would reveal several marks that I would have to explain. But, I did what I was told. I took all of my clothes off, and stood, exposed. The nurse entered the room with another woman, and I was told to bend over and cough before they approached me. I laughed as I was supposed to be coughing. No weapons or drugs in my anus, I thought, not tonight.
The new woman was carrying a clipboard that had a chart that featured black outlines of the shape of a person, standing arms out. I soon realized that it was their intention to mark down any cuts, scrapes, or abrasions that were on my body onto the diagram. I was a bit embarassed, but watched with a bit of amusement as they began to walk around me and draw on the chart. I was particularly amused when Rebecca, the first nurse, had to draw the scratchy words that I had carved into my flesh. Over my heart, "Empathy." Down my arm, "Apathy." On the front of my hip, "Sex." I could tell she was trying to pay a bit of attention to detail in her documentation, as she specifically made the words sloppy. She then questioned where I got all of the bruises from. "My girlfriend is a vampire," I said, matter-of-factly.
It took her a long time to finish her work of art. I didn't realize that I had some of the marks that she was making. As she marked nail marks down the back of the picture, I said "No way, really?!" It had been a crazy weekend.
This was the last process before showing me to my room. When I walked out of the examination room, my parents were there waiting. My mother said, "Are you happy with all of this attention?" My father just hugged me again, and said "Don't worry, T, you'll be home soon." The nurse told them that they would have to bring in some suitable clothes for me to wear. For now, I could wear scrubs as pajamas, but the long black skirt with the slit to the thigh wouldn't cut it in the hospital. They handed off my boots and fishnets to my parents. I got to keep my Nine Inch Nails t-shirt, and they provided me with blue terry-cloth footwear.
As I was walking towards my room, I realized that it would not be good for my parents to go home and go through my things, which they undoubtedly would. I turned to head back towards them, and told the nurse that I couldn't stay. I then proceeded to freak out. I tried to run down the hallway, but Rebecca caught me and dragged me to my room. She told me to be quiet because my new roommate was sleeping. I told her that there was no way that I was going to sleep. She directed me to the bed, where I laid for a few minutes and then got up. She brought me back to the bed, where I again laid for a few minutes and then got up. Finally she came into the room with another nurse, who had some straps in her hand. She attached them securely to the sides of the bed, and said "Lay down." I laid. "Please don't use those on me, " I said. She told me that she wouldn't as long as I stayed where I was.She left the room and came back with a little white cup that had a few pills in it. "Take these," she said. I had spent years taking any pill that was placed in front of me with absolutely no questions asked. It was that night, though, that I decided to be selective. "I'm not taking those pills until you tell me what they are." She tried to sate me with the simple answer, "It'll help you sleep.""No way," I said, " I want to see some drug fact sheets.""Just do me this favor," she said, "take the pills." I was surprised at the exasperation in her voice, and felt bad for her. I told her that I would take them, but only because she asked nicely. I'd had a hell of a night, and truthfully, as much as I wanted to be a smartass, I really just wanted to go to sleep.Soon, I drifted off.
I awoke to a strange noise. A creaking noise. I rolled over and looked at the bed nearest the door, and saw that it was moving up and down. I looked lower, to the floor, and saw that my new roommate was laying on the floor, bed atop her feet, pushing the entire set-up up and down.
"You're awake," she said. "My name is Cynthia. I'm toning up my legs, because I'm busting out of here." I rolled my eyes and rolled over in bed. I wanted to get some more sleep. "You can't go back to sleep. We have to take showers and then go get breakfast. And then we have group." It took a few moments for me to realize that I was indeed in a mental hospital. It took me several more to realize what that entailed. Group? I was certainly not going to sit and talk to a group about my feelings. I got up, and walked towards the bathroom. I felt groggy. I looked at myself in the mirror, and recoiled. I looked down at my bandaged wrist and shook my head. I thought about how I would get out later that day and tell Elliot exactly how crazy my evening had been.I started to close the door to the bathroom, and a nurse walked in and stopped me. "No, no, honey. You can't be in there alone. You're on SP3. That means that you can't have the door shut." She explained to me that I was to be watched while I was showering and using the bathroom. I was appalled. She stood and watched as I undressed, stepped into the shower, and scrubbed myself down. I was mortified.
Afterwards I followed her to the dining room. Everyone was beginning to show up to eat breakfast. All of the residents eyed me, and slowly began to approach me to ask questions. I noticed the boy from the night before sitting in the corner. "Stay away from her!" he warned them. "She's got AIDS." A girl with red hair rolled her eyes and said, "Eric, you think everyone has AIDS." She walked over to me and said, "My name's Amber and I'm really sad. I want to have a baby."I was annoyed at the barrage of personal details she was firing at me freely. I was soon to learn that this was less because of her personality and more a byproduct of being institutionalized. Everyone in the place had been conditioned to talk about themselves, constantly. During breakfast, I learned about Eric, who was bipolar and had Tourette's. Amber, the 16-year-old who was clinically depressed and sad because she'd had several miscarriages. Danny, who along with a couple of the other boys, had anger management problems. June, who liked to be called Junebug, who had run away from home. They all wanted to tell me their stories, and they all wanted to hear mine. A chipper blonde girl updated me on who-liked-who and who hung out with who. I didn't touch the food that they brought me, and Cynthia asked if she could eat my eggs. I said that she could.When we were done eating, a nurse came around and talked to each person individually.
She asked each person, "Do you feel like hurting yourself? Do you feel like hurting someone else?" Everyone answered "No" to both questions. When she got to me, I looked at her for awhile after she was done speaking, as if lost in thought. "I'm not going to hurt myself," I started, "but I'm going to knock THAT kid out," I said, pointing at Eric. The nurse looked alarmed. She took my hand and said, "Come with me."I was led to a room where I was left by myself for a few minutes. Soon, a man came in to talk to me. "Are you still feeling like hurting someone?""I was kidding around," I said. "I didn't really want to hurt anyone." He shook his head.
Rule#2People in the mental health industry have absolutely no sense of humour.
When I was finally let out of separations, I got to go back to group. Everyone was sitting around in a circle, murmuring between themselves. I heard someone say that Nate was still in bed. I asked the girl with the mousy blonde hair, "Who the hell is Nate?"
"Oh.. Nate's very mean," she said, "he's in here because he popped some kid's eye out with his thumb."
"Why does Nate get to sleep in?"
"Nate gets to do whatever he wants."
I was pissed. I'd been wanting to go back to bed since I'd gotten out of the shower. I stood up and started to march towards my room. A nurse stopped me. "Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm going to go back to bed."
"You can't do that."
"If Nate gets to do it, I'm going to do it too. Fuck this." I stomped past her, again heading towards my room. I stopped short when I saw a very tall, scary looking boy coming towards me. Enter, Nate.
I could see why Nate got away with as much as he did. He was physically scary. He towered over even the tallest male nurse, and was twice as bulky. Nate walked calmly past me and into the room where the group meeting was being held. The nurse followed me and said "You know, Nate doesn't care if he gets a star on his chart. If you're good, you get a star on your chart, and at the end of the week, you might get to go the cafeteria for lunch."
"I'm glad to see you've got such an advanced method for keeping people in line. What are we, kindergardeners?" She informed me that I didn't get a star for my breakfast that morning because I had threatened Eric. "You've got to be kidding me," I said. At that point I didn't give a shit about earning stars.
I spent the rest of the day in group sessions, doing various activities, until they called me into a room to talk with my assigned psychiatrist for the first time. And then there I sat. This lady that I couldn't understand asking me the same questions that I had been asked before. She wanted to know about the cutting. She explained to me that from some of the marks on my arm, she knew that I had used IV drugs. When I told her that she absolutely couldn't tell my mother about the drugs, she questioned me about my sexuality. "Does your mother know that you are a lesbian?" I laughed to myself at this question, while Dr. Jayachandran tells me that she thinks we should call my mother and talk to her about it. I unwittingly agreed to this, mostly because I couldn't understand what she had asked. She seemed intent on my confronting my mother in some way. Soon enough, my mother was on speakerphone. "I'm here with your daughter Terese," the good doctor said, "Are you aware that she is a lesbian?""A what?" my mom questioned. I know that she could understand the foreign accent even less than I could. "What is my daughter?""Your daughter, Terese, is a lesbian."Silence.And then my mother spoke. "Oh, no. No. She's not a lesbian. She's not allowed to be a lesbian."The doctor looked at me. "I've got your daughter here, ma'am, and she is telling me of being a lesbian.""She's mistaken. I told her that she's not allowed to be a lesbian, she's got to be bisexual. She needs to keep her options open."The doctor's mouth dropped. "Okay, Mrs. Trost. Thank you."She hung up the phone."It seems that your mother might be at the heart of some of your problems," she said."Tell me something I didn't already know."
That night at dinner, Cynthia asked for my dessert. I obliged.
For the next few days, I earned very few stars. I suppose it was my "zany antics" that were the problem. I had read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" one too many times, but also had a sincere disregard for rules. I was upset that I hadn't been released on my first day, and by day two I had realized that the whole thing was going to be more of an ordeal than I had expected.
On day three, I awoke to Cynthia's excercising. She looked at me and whispered, "Today's the day, Teri."I smiled at her and shrugged my shoulders. I got up and took my supervised shower and headed towards the lunchroom. Cynthia followed close behind, and when she finished her breakfast, she ate mine also. I had realized in the last day and a half that we had to be secretive about sharing our food, as they marked down what we did and didn't eat. Having been prone to not eating very much to begin with, it was the supervised bathroom visits that had pushed me over the edge towards a strictly liquid diet. I was going to be goddamned if I was going to let a nurse watch me shit.
An orderly came to take away the cart of breakfast dishes, and as he was being buzzed out, I saw a glint in Cynthia's eye. In an instant she had stood up and started to dart towards the door. She pushed her way past the orderly and was at once beyond the door and my field of vision. It took a few moments for the nurses to realize what had happened, but by then the floor was abuzz. It was chaos. Amber ran up to me excitedly, asking me "Did she do it? Did she get out?"
"I suppose," I said. I really wanted a cigarette and was jealous of Cynthia's escape. It didn't last long, though. About an hour later, we were in group, and we watched through the windows as Cynthia was escorted to the room, gathered her belongings, and was taken away. I never saw her again. They told us that she was getting taken to a more permanent placing. Becky, the only nurse that was relatively nice, told me later that they had tackled Cynthia to the ground in the kitchen, where she had been chasing the kitchen staff around with a butcher knife.
About mid-day an admissions nurse came upstairs with a girl who was about my age. She had shoulder length hair blonde hair with a black streak in the front. When she walked through the door, we were in the common room. They showed her to a room across the hallway from mine. "Junebug," Amber said, "It looks like you've got a new roommate." I was jealous. The girl was pretty cute and seemed relatively subdued. She had not yet been programmed by the system. I wanted her to be my roommate. I decided to take her under my wing.
That same day, my father arrived with a care package. He brought me clothes to wear and slippers. I could tell that he tried to bring things that I wouldn't despise. He also brought a Walkman with a Depeche Mode tape in it. He told me he knew that the music would help me sleep. He told me that they had not torn apart my room, and that my mother was telling all of her friends that she had a crazy daughter. We both rolled our eyes at this. He parted by saying, "Try and hang in there, T, you'll be out of here soon enough." As I was walking back to my room with my possessions, a nurse stopped me and went through them. She took most of the stuff away, including the Walkman and the hoodie. She told me that I couldn't have anything that I might hang myself with. I stomped back to my room, ranting incoherently.
At lunch that day, the new girl sat next to me. "Hi," she said, "my name is Kathryn, or Kat. I think you are cute."I was amused. "You're cute too," I said, "I like your hair." Aside from my comment, I acted incredibly disinterested. This seemed to pique her curiosity. She asked me a few questions, and I mumbled bland answers. After lunch, we played foosball. In the lunchroom, there was a foosball table. Whenever we were not occupied eating, or playing self-esteem bingo, or making crafts, we played foosball. And all of the kids were very aggressive about it, and very good at it. That's about all there was to do for fun in that joint. They put a radio up for us to listen to, which was constantly on B-96, the pop station. I informed the nurse that the music that was playing was making me feel suicidal. They played the same Janet Jackson song over and over. At the time I detested it, but now it's very nostalgic. I asked the nurse if we could listen to my Depeche Mode tape, and she agreed. The rest of the kids weren't happy with the choice of music, but Kat and I danced around the lunchroom to Enjoy the Silence. I suppose it was right there that our romance began.
Later that day, we got to do crafts. I thought it would be funny to make a bird house, but they told me that the bird house kits were all gone. I could either make a jewelry box or a note holder. I didn't want to make either, so I threw a fit, screaming something about how I didn't think that my mental hospital stay would be complete without getting to make either a birdhouse or a wicker basket. Soon enough, feeling the futility of it all, I was sitting at a table putting together a note holder. Kat chose to make the jewelry box. As we were painting our wooden pieces, she said that she was going to call her jewely box "The Time Warper." We started to talk about Rocky Horror Picture Show and realized that we had seen eachother before, on a Saturday night, at the live performance. We had a laugh about some people that we both knew. I started to assemble the pieces of the noteholder. One piece wouldn't fit. I started to cry, dramatically. "It won't fit! I can't even put this thing together." Kat leaned in very close to me and grabbed my shoulders. "Shhh,"she said, "It's okay." She put her face next to mine and soon we were kissing. A nurse popped up out of nowhere and said "NO! You are breaking eachother's bubbles!" She put a hand on each of our shoulders and pushed us apart. I sniffled, still frustrated by the fact that my noteholder wouldn't go together. I looked at her and giggled. "I kind of liked breaking your bubble.""Me too," she smiled.Nate walked over a minute later and picked up the mostly-assembled note holder. With a grunt he forced the piece that wouldn't fit into place. "There you go," he said.That note holder would hang on the wall of my mother's kitchen with a note that said, "My daughter was committed and all I got was this lousy note-holder," for many years to come.
The next morning, I woke up and had breakfast as normal. I drank my orange juice and pawned the meal off on Kat. It was the day before my 17th birthday. Kat and I were sitting around after group, filling out questionaires. Every once in awhile we would giggle loudly and pretend to pop invisible bubbles around us, and she would lean over and kiss my cheek. I signed one of my papers and handed it in. A few minutes later a nurse pulled Kat aside and talked to her. She came back giggling.
"She asked why you wrote Teri Harms on your paper. I had to tell her that it was really your last name." I suppose it didn't bode well for me that my signature had always included a crosshair and an anarchy symbol.
After lunch the nurses were all talking about something that had happened on the outside. They told us that we could all gather around in the group room and watch the television news broadcast. It seems a few crazy kids got together and shot up their school. They were goth kids. I could feel everyone in the room looking at me. "What? Assholes, I'm not goth. I'm punk rock." I had a sense that when I did finally get out of the place, Columbine would change my school experience, and I was right.
Every day there was a battery of tests that we'd have to go through. That day, they gave me an IQ test. The test was formatted so that there was a flip book in front of me, and on each page of the book, there was a question. I would have to answer each question, as fast as possible, until the time was up. I rapidly answered the questions, one by one, accurately. The proctor of the test looked amazed.
At group that afternoon, Eric said that he didn't want to sit next to Nate because he thought that Nate would give him AIDS. He sat, blinking and flinching, as he spoke. Nate got very angry and picked up a chair. He hurled the chair through the air at Eric, who just narrowly dodged catching the leg of it in the forehead. They pulled Nate from the room and put him in separations. After group, we ate dinner and Kat and I took a place next to Eric.
"I want to be your friend, Eric," I said. "Let's have a staring contest." He seemed genuinely excited. I stared into his eyes and said, "Go!" He looked at me for a second and then flinched. "I win!" I said, "Let's do it again!" I kept this up for about a half-an-hour, until it was time for visitors. Kat wanted to introduce me to her parents. They seemed to genuinely like me. Her mother told me that she had found Kat passed out in the bathroom with some sort of aerosol can. "Is that what all the kids are doing these days?" I assured her that aerosol cans were relatively passe, and went to find my parents.
"Are you having fun here? Is this what you wanted?" my mom asked. "You know, they told us just know that you are a fucking genius. I'd believe it, too. But you're so goddamn lazy. You don't apply yourself. You should be getting much better grades in school." I laughed it off. "Kid's got a fucking 180 IQ and she's failing Theology." My mom moaned and groaned about it for awhile. I had just looked at Eric, speaking with his parents, when I saw that he was pointing at me. He was smiling widely. "She's my friend," he explained. "We have staring contests." My eyes widened and I excused myself from the room.
The next day one of my therapists told me that they had diagnosed me, and that my medication regimen would change slightly. I would take an antidepressant and an antipsychotic in the morning, and an antidepressant at night to help me sleep. I would also be treated for several allergy problems. She told me that she had confronted my mother about some of the problems that she felt my mother was responsible for, and that my mother had reacted adversely. "Great," I told her, "Now I'm not going to have any peace at home unless I pull a Lizzie Borden." Refer to Rule #2, people in the mental health industry have no sense of humour. "Do you feel like harming your mother, Teri?" I rolled my eyes.She explained to me that my moods would start to stabilize soon.
It couldn't have come soon enough. I was starting to get really angry. The pinnacle of my anger came later that day. They gathered us all together and took us down to the gymnasium. They announced to us that we were going to play a game. We would be divided into two teams. Each team would have to get a ball from one end of the gym to the other. This would be done by each member of the team standing in a circle, holding a string that was attached to a ring that would hang in the center. The ball would balance on the ring. As a group, the team would hold the strings just taught enough that the ball wouldn't fall. The team that got from one end of the gym to the other first would be declared the winners.They separated Kat and I. My team included Nate, Amber, and Eric. I gave my team a pep talk. "Okay, guys. We can beat them. We will be victorious." I was very competitive.We started to move slowly across the gym, ball balancing between us. All of a sudden, Eric flinched and the ball went flying. Nate started cussing. He threw his string. Amber fell on the ground and started crying. I had a kid with Tourette's, a girl that was about to off herself, and a guy that had anger control problems, all demonstrating their psychoses as the other team continued to slowly but surely move across the gym, until they had won the game. I turned and looked at the nurse. "You put me with these assholes? The odds were stacked against me!"
"Part of the excercise is dealing with defeat." That was the only explanation I was offered. I was incredibly disillusioned with the system. I wanted out of there as soon as possible.
I asked my therapist later how I could go about going home. She told me that I would have to be more agreeable. I would have to start earning stars.
That night Kat decided to move into my room. She packed up all of her things and moved them into my dresser. They didn't realize what she was doing until she had moved everything. The nurses told her that she couldn't move in with me, and took everything out of my drawers and moved her back into her old room. In the process, she managed to procure a pen. She wrote me a note on the back of one of the pages of the handbook giving me her phone number and personal information. This was strictly forbidden. She signed it, "I love you. <3 <3 Kat."
Before I went to sleep that night, I laid on the ground and started doing the same push-up excercises that Cynthia had done. I was either going to get out of there soon, or I was going to bust out.
From the moment I woke up the next morning I did everything by the book. I gave everyone the answers that they wanted to hear. For the first time ever, I got a star for breakfast. I got stars for each activity we did. I didn't complain. I sat about at least five feet away from Kat at all times. I didn't have any staring contests with Eric. I told everyone that I was feeling much better, and that I was over the whole "madman business."
It was boring after that. I stopped having a good time. No one thought I was amusing anymore, but I had to keep the ruse up so that I could get out. I missed my friends from the outside world. I assumed that most of them had heard about what happened, but I was worried that a few of them hadn't. I swallowed my medication when I was told. Soon it was easier and easier to follow the rules. I just didn't care anymore. I didn't really feel like talking to anyone, but I stopped making up elaborate stories at group and just talked about how I occasionally got upset with my mother when she grounded me. I still wasn't telling the truth, but they bought those stories.
I continued that way for a week. I earned stars left and right. At the end of the week they told me that I could go to the cafeteria. I marched down politely. I sat and ate an orange. I looked into the kitchen where Cynthia had terrorized the employees. I threw my orange peel away and followed the nurse back upstairs. I thanked her for letting me get out of 4-A for a little while.
I had several meetings with my shrink and talked about paths to health. I pretended to understand her. We met with my mother and I apologized for my awful behaviour. I wrote out a plan to succeed. My mother told me that I could no longer wear black, and I agreed to her demand. I decided to submit to anything that I had to so that I could get out of the hospital.
Finally, the day came that I was told I could leave. I would have to continue outpatient care, and to continue to take my medication. I was told that if I took the medication I wouldn't be compelled to act out as much. I walked out, waving a tearful goodbye to Kat, whispering that I would call her. I had a pocket full of prescriptions. I got my Walkman back.
When I got home my mom gave me a bit of space. "You can call Elliot if you'd like. He's been calling to check up on you."
I called him. I pushed play on the CD player. "Hi," he said, "How are you feeling?"
"I could possibly be fading," I sang along. "Turning into dust."

You are more than an echo.

Today, I am rice paper. Vellum. Glancing in mirrors, I barely noticed my features. I woke up this morning and took a small parcel from my bedside table. I removed a needle and thread and quickly stitched a few sutures in my bottom lip. I listened a little too long to the throaty coos of the mourning doves that nest beside my window.

There are quiet times and there are loud times, and lately I've been confusing the two. I walked two miles in the cold to a doctor's appointment yesterday. No good news. I sat, staring in fascination at a child playing with a toy in the waiting room. He was sliding wooden blocks that were painted bright primary colours along intermingling metal wires that curved into various loop d'loos. The red and blue and yellow shapes screamed at me. He was rushing them to their destinations. They plead with me to stop him. I asked the good doctor what this reaction could mean, and was met with a blank stare. “I'm not your psychiatrist,” the look said, sternly. I hear all sorts of things.

I light a cigarette and inhale a puff of smoke. It stings my freshly sewn lip. I plod through the house, barefoot, to the kitchen. The slapping sounds of my footfalls echo in my head. On the counter, I find a typewritten note. “Not today.”
Dropped o's.

I'm thinking about what I am most disappointed by. In the end, I suppose it will be the lack of innocence in everything. The corrosion of all lovely things at the tipping point. I guess only time will tell but the anticipation of it all is killing me.

I used to dream often of the west coast, though I've never been. I got a job in New York as a copy editor for a real estate company. I read ads for penthouses that I would never be able to afford, checking for spelling and grammatical errors. In the end I lost that job because I often changed correct spellings to ones that were more aesthetically pleasing. I liked to see the letter “a” in serif fonts. I would unknowingly submit paragraphs full of a's for publication. My very last ad simply questioned “Do you believe in god?” over and over and over.

And now I'm back in the midstates and my dreams have moved south. I dream of roving around on a Mexican playa with no thoughts of prosperity in my mind. No thoughts of fame or wealth or compensation for a day's work. I come to roads where there are chalk outlines that I recognize to be the shapes of people I know. The skies are so clear in my dreams.

Have a cup of coffee and I feel better. Pick up the paper and thumb through the pages, pausing at the obituaries to scan the list of names. Have the presence of mind not to read the actual columns of words that so easily sum up a person's life. It would just depress me anyways. Do the crossword puzzle.

When I'm done with the puzzle I take a hot shower, get dressed, and walk downstairs. Notice that my neighbors are home, their children are shreiking in delight at a television that is tuned to a children's show. I hear cartoonish voices chattering. I have no television in my apartment. Sold it before I came back from New York. I can't watch shows because my mind wanders too easily. I imagine what the characters on sitcoms are doing while they are not on the screen. I miss the storylines.

I collect my mail from the box and notice that my neighbors have a package waiting for them. Shuffling through the mail, my eye keeps going back to the box. What's inside? A toy? A new telephone? Some books? What do my neighbors read about?

The last letter in my hand shakes me. It's from an insurance company. Possibly a check. I don't want to open it.

My mother passed away six months ago. It was a hot August day when I got the call. We hadn't talked for awhile. My sister called and asked me if my brother had called me yet. I told her he hadn't, and she said “You'll probably want to sit down.” I knew before she told me. She went on for awhile about the circumstances before she came out with it, and when she finally mentioned it there was a pregnant pause. She expected a reaction. I told her calmly that I'd fly in as soon as possible. For the next week I put myself on autopilot. I stared for countless hours at my mother's lifeless body. I put on a dress and some makeup and greeted people at the wake. They all wanted to hear about New York. I politely told them stories about my neighborhood. We talked as if we were not standing next to a corpse. I tried to feel sentimental when I looked at pictures from years ago. After trying to muster some emotion I decided that it was best to just get through the week without crying. On the plane ride home I started to think about the fears that I had as a child of losing my mother. I often woke up in the middle of the night and crawled into her bed, waving my hand over her nose to feel her hot breath. Satisfied that she was alive, I would fall asleep next to her.

It's happened, I thought to myself, she's gone now. Not so bad, I found myself thinking. Not so bad as I thought it would be.

And now, standing with the check in my hand I felt a little nauseated. Some technicalities with the insurance policy had delayed the issuance of the check. It seemed that they thought that my mother's death might have been a suicide, which would have terminated their responsibility to pay out. It didn't feel right to argue for the money so I just waited it out. A few weeks back a nice lady called to apologize and tell me that the check was on the way. I thanked her and gave her my new address.

I walk back into my apartment and put the envelope on a corkboard with a red thumbtack. Call my sister. She answers the phone sounding tired and I try to make the call quick. She never seems comfortable talking to me anymore. “The check's here. I'll get you the money as soon as possible.” She is audibly elated, as she says “Finally, they got their heads out of their asses.” I scoff and hang up.

My phone rings and it's Matt. He says he's at the door and wants to come in. I ring him up. He brings me fresh fruit and before I can say too much he is pushing me to the bedroom. He fucks me and in the silence afterwards I cling to him. Ordinarily I would have found this to be despicable but I smell his hair and his skin as he traces his fingers over my lips. He says nothing of the stitches and I love him more. Matthew never gets angry with me. He doesn't find my silence to be vacant. Having fallen asleep in his arms, I awake panicked. The fluttering under his eyelids calms me, and I think again to myself. Even if his breath fell silent and his eyes came to a rest, it wouldn't be so bad. But he has promised me that he will never die.

When we are both awake Matthew sits down at the typewriter. I watch him from the corner of my eye as he taps away at a story that he's writing. I bring him a glass of wine and look at the words that have appeared on the clean white paper. Matthew tells me that his story is written in the same meter as his favorite William S. Burroughs novel. I take his finished pages and lay them out in rows and columns on the hardwood floors of the apartment. His words at my feet, I take a small telescope from my bookshelf and hold it to my eye. I read the story in Matthew's voice. The o's line up. The a's are dropped.

It is lunchtime and I have to take my medication. I feel more tired than I should and realize that I haven't eaten in more than a day. I cut apart an apple and eat a few slices. I swallow my pills dry and offer Matthew the rest of my meal.

Sitting on the old orange couch I strum my guitar to the rhythm of the tapping of the typewriter. I think about the note that sits on my kitchen counter. I found it on the sidewalk on the walk home from the pharmacy. As much as it pains me to admit such a morose side of me, I had been thinking about how it would feel to throw myself in front of a passing city bus. What it would be like to give fate a big slap in the face, to laugh at the amount of control I had. I looked down and there was a small scrap of paper. Worn edges. “Not today,” it said. My typewriter drops a's. God's typewriter drops o's.

Matthew is finished writing and he walks over to me. “Did you take your pills?” he asks. I nod and smile. Matthew is the only one who doesn't look at me differently now.

The day I called my mother to tell her that my test results had come in, she was busy making a grocery list. I listened to her clamoring away at the cupboards, and wished for just a moment that I could be home to eat the endless supply of canned stewed tomatoes that somehow amassed on the shelves. I didn't know how to tell her, really. I'm not one for dramatics. “Ma,” I started. “You'd better sit down.” As soon as the words left my lips my face turned bright red. “You'd better sit down,” I'd said. How banal.

“What's wrong?”my mom asked. I told her as succinctly as possible.

“Ma, I just got back from the doctor and he said that the cancer isn't operable. I've probably only got a few months left.” I felt bad that I hadn't thought about it more before I called her. Even then, I didn't want to make it a big deal. “When are you coming home, then?” she asked. I told her that I didn't know if I would come home. She was quiet for a long time; a painfully long time, and then said “It's not right for a mother to outlive her own daughter.”

“Ma, it's okay.”

Mostly I was feeling bad for disappointing her. She had been so proud of me when I moved to New York. Told all of her friends about my writing job as if I had penned the great American novel. I came home once for a visit and found that she had even framed some of my ads. “I didn't write those, Ma,” I explained, “I just made sure everything was spelled right.” She waved her hand in dismissal. And now, I was throwing turpentine at the painting of the future in her head. Colours dripping down the canvas, all muddled together.

Matthew's hand softly touching my neck stops my thoughts short. He kisses my cheek and brushes my hair back over my ear. I want to tell him all of the things that I am thinking but I am afraid to speak. I am afraid that if I start to speak I will start to cry, and I am worried what Matthew will think of me. We have an unspoken treaty to only silently acknowledge each other's emotions. We speak of love in only the most visceral of terms. When we drink too much we get sappy. On all other occasions we act only vaguely interested in eachother.

We fuck again, right there on the couch. My hands claw at his back as if to pull the life from him into myself. My head becomes too heavy to hold up and I black out and I awaken to the warmth of blankets and an empty apartment. I am in my bed. I find a note under my pillow. It is handwritten. “You are more than an echo,” it says. I roll over and drift back to sleep.

I dream again of Mexico.

In my dream my mother's hand guides me. I follow her vague outline to the future. There are no hills, there is only flat land. But the sky is so clear. The sky is so clear in my dreams.

A Letter to Oscar.

Greetings! I am currently driving south on Interstate 57 towards Memphis, Tennessee. Since the onset of my voyage, I have transitioned through four National Public radio stations. The sun is just coming up now and the news that there is indeed a new day is spilling through my car speakers in stereo. I don't trust things that I hear in mono.

I am alone in my car but my memories will ignore this. They will play back in my head in colour saturated 8mm film. No audio, just the clicking of the projector. I will see myself smiling, the rich amber of the sunrise spilling across the dash of the car. The cameraman is in the passenger seat. I am perpetually laughing at a joke that he is telling and the beauty of it all. I am always smiling for the camera. Perhaps this is why I am never lonely.

I ran into your tall friend the other day. We didn't say much to eachother as I was surprised that he was not with you and I must have had this permanent dumb grin on my face. It was nice to see him, though, perhaps this is the merit of interdimensional travel.I was watching a documentary the other day about a planet that will undoubtedly cross paths with our solar system in 2012 and throw off the balance of all things, sending us spiralling and teetering in darkness through space. Make sure to hold on tight for that ride because those of us who make it to our new home will meet God.

Yours respectfully,
Emily

P.S. Give my regards to Mharmar.
P.P.S I believe in ghosts.