Gladys

Gladys 

Move the broad from my room.

She stormed from the hall,

her words deadened by the glass partition

separating us from the staff. 

I am no broad, I thought, I am eighteen.

I had just told Gladys to suck up

her snoring, wishing she would choke on it

so that I could sleep before morning swept

the dust from the floor and the nurses shouted

for us to come swallow our medications.

Gladys was thin and frail,

swimming in a night coat the color of salmon

with a voice as large as the Liberty Bell

at noon on a clear morning of quiet birds.

Her slippers had lace at the ankles. She wore gloves

to the elbows and sang acapella at all meals. 

The red lipstick she used to warm her lips

lengthened her brows in perfect arcs above each eye.

It was not my idea to put me in her room. 

Staff insisted. The rest of the patients

were afraid of me,

afraid that I would turn my stare on them,

sling profanities, spit when lock down became too hard

like it did when my mind returned to my brain

after wandering the skies, taking refuge in castles

that existed like a line of palm to my hand.

She told me to fuck off, the word fuck

splintering from Gladys’s mouth.

It didn’t fit her the way it fit my young punk self.

I haunted Gladys, followed behind her

as she paced the floors, me making clucking

sounds, a tired bird. A couple times

she stopped suddenly and I ran

right into her almost knocking her down.

I didn’t mean her harm, just wanted

to irritate her as a shoe too small

it causes blisters. She gave me the stare;

I felt her daggers in my gut.

They didn’t move me. We stayed to scream

at each other long enough to become friends. 

I learned to tolerate her snoring.

She slipped her elephant pills to me.

I would swim in my bed sheets,

my feet tangled in sand.  Staff caught on. 

Gladys was forced to tip her head down,

stick out her tongue, shake it so the nurses

could be certain she swallowed

everything, including her voice. 

Her voice lessened on medication.

At Christmas we strung the tree with popcorn. 

One morning Gladys was caught gumming popcorn

with an empty strand of string in her hand.

Gladys told me that one day her son

would pull up to our window in her pink Cadillac.

She would drive away with her song.

Time hung itself in the ward

as the calendar moved on. 

Gladys sung. The rest of us paced.

We all ate three meals

a day with Lorna Doones for snacks.

Someone banged their head

against the wall, threw a fist into the pillar,

jumped from chair to chair,

burst out laughing.  Time read like a story board,

the frames never wavering in their ink,

committed to the one story they told.

The pink Cadillac showed itself.

I knew everything was possible.