The behavioral health unit spans the hospital’s top floor.
Its windows look down on a lot packed with white SUVs.
This is the Mojave desert. White reflects heat. But you think
all that white is a sign that you’re safe. Or maybe the opposite.
Inside every angel is a devil these days. It’s hard to feel like
anything good’s happening when everything’s taken away.
Hair clips. Toothpicks. Your father’s masonic ring,
which the staff pass around like a sacrament and lord
on their fingers. The one pen you’re given is too small
for a child’s hand and only writes in spurts when held
at ninety degrees. The idea is if you stab yourself,
or someone else, you’ll stab shallow. That’s not the worst
motto for living. Your paper consists of flimsy placemats,
which you fold into strange origami animals after filling them
with notes about your time here. You write some poems,
short ones, mostly about people in the parking lot.
A guy with five kids. You imagine his wife inside dying.
An older couple you think might belong to the local
alt-right militia but it’s hard to tell from five floors up
and looking through a window obscured by patients’ art.
You write about people moving with urgency, in wheelchairs,
with walkers, near strangers, and worse—alone. Who comes
to a place like this alone? You did. You include the date
on everything you pen. The psychiatrist likes it when
you know what day it is. It means you’re lucid enough
for him to tell you what a failure you are for being here.
When will you learn, he asks, as if living with trauma’s
a moral failing, a crack you can stabilize with epoxy or prayer.
Here, seconds are minutes and minutes are hours and hours
are days and the days don’t end until the insurance does.
