4th Excerpt From Mind Emerging
Walking on Toes
At age ten, I was sitting on a school bus with Lucy who pointed out the window at Gary. Gary was wearing a red T-shirt and black cargo pants, and Gary was walking on his toes. Lucy said that this was a sign of mental illness. I silently vowed to never walk on my toes; this didn’t save me from schizophrenia.
Waking
It’s not the wind that catches my hair in fever. It’s the rough edge of the street in broken tar, the jack hammer tattling a half block away, and the bench the lady before me pissed on. It’s the fact that I’ll lay again in damp grass, wake with green stain on both elbows.
I return home and tell Guy there is a river running through the middle of the family room and the little dogs are in danger of drowning. Guy tells me to pack up, we are going to the hospital. It feels like “again” for the 50th time.
With fevered hair, Guy takes me to the hospital. I am dressed in their gowns. An identification band is wrapped loosely around my wrist. The street is not stolen from my mouth, replaced with tender thoughts of others who too are dressed in gowns.
The patients offer no heart to the bad mouthed me. They think instead to hassle my difference. My difference shows in the fever of my hair and the way I say fuck you.
In order for patients to be kind to one another, a team of staff will need to be skilled in composure, skilled in kind but firm heart, understanding that not all patients arrive knowing which side of the napkin to place the fork. Most arrive knife in chest, pain in eye, with little mind for civilities.
*
It is dinner time. Everything smells like overcooked broccoli. All except me eat in the television lounge. I am too paranoid to eat there. The talking television mixed with the talking patients creates an uproar in my brain. The canals of my ears beg to be cemented shut. The staff cut me slack. I can eat standing at my post at the corner of the nurse’s station.
*
One of the nurses tells me I’m not special. She tells me this because I have pens while the other patients don’t. My doctor has written an order for me to have pens and paper. Without poetry, I lay in bed haunted, or pace the floors dazed at the fact that my body just won’t die. Please don’t take my pens away. I promise not to write on walls. I promise not to stab myself.
*
The hospital gown I wear is not flattering. Nor should it be. It catches breeze from the movement of other people. I stand still as a hinge. No words leave my mouth. I protect my heart the way a child does her first hat. No one takes my heart just as no one takes the child’s hat. The child has made it clear that the hat is to remain on her head.
*
There is not enough room in the hall for the tall man to shout, but he tries. It doesn’t get him the extra cup of cocoa he craves.
*
It is cool in the hospital. My own clothes don’t provide enough warmth. I wrap blankets around me and stroll the hall with its fourteen doors all the same shade of pink.
Maybe I will tell the doctor that I am from the tip of Alaska that barely makes it on the map. Maybe he will believe this more than when I tell him I live on the periphery of light. It’s all a matter of perspective.
*
I tell myself if I drink pomegranate juice the world will seem lazier than the hot tempo at which it travels, knocking down skinny children and dogs that pee in the street.
*
In here are people prepared to help me let go of the agitation of tight pants, help me slip into cotton, the cotton the dream state where for miles my mind can jog softly down the freeway of other worlds and not be hurt standing in the world of 2 a.m. at the edge of a cliff wanting to jump, knowing I could fly if gravity would just stay still for a minute. Dream sleep and jump, always to float in the safety of the subconscious. It is waking that is the challenge. My mind tonight twists into a knotted string of twine.