For Observation

I

On the third floor behind the nurse’s desk

A locked man paces the plexiglass cage

Within its corners he spits out his rage

He wrenches his face in a way grotesque

Begging for cigarettes his lips are tarred

Desperate, tormented, wild and afraid

And somehow naked in this sad parade

Watching us watch his pain with disregard.

II

The elevator swallows me this night

To the first floor where adults are cared for

I don’t know why I’m not on the teen floor

I’m crying for myself, this is not right.

I’m maybe twenty in the bright light’s glare

Al Greenberg, my mentor, registers me

He was here and carved his name on a chair

And makes a living writing poetry.

As if in a trance I walk in my room

Another girl sleeps in the second bed

My tears roll down, so many tears are shed

It is like I am entering her tomb.

III

I sit down in the cafeteria

Across from me Fred Michaels takes a chair

He’s big and friendly like a teddy bear

And no one else sits in our area.

He speaks as I spread honey on my toast

But the weeks pass before I answer him

He says “Time here is just an interim.”

He says “You will be here six months at most.”

But others stay only a week or two

I watch shock treatments transform my roommate

She smiles now and does not isolate.

I watch the patterns patients follow through.

IV

Fred sits across from me on a soft chair

The cushion sags from his substantial weight

A flannel shirt, I watch him contemplate

Life has become an “in here” and “out there”.

V

Eileen Andersen tailored therapy

To each patient, plainly given free reign

Traditional technique into the drain

A tiny powerhouse, she works with me.

One girl, Diane, she hands a mallet to

And Diane’s rage railed on a cement block;

The sparks flew week by week at two o’clock.

But I could never learn what she went through

A girl my age through the revolving door.

I won and lost again to that turnstile

In that they only stayed a little while

And I would blend in with the furniture.

VI

The psych-assistants have adopted me

I am included in their camaraderie

But I am mindful of this happiness

Which is transitory like my life here

Time goes quickly, the day will soon appear

And I will walk away nevertheless.

I will leave Abbot Hospital July

I wish I kept my old apartment

I’ll find a different one with decent rent

More heartbroken than glad I say goodbye.

Jonni the closest lets me in at night

Sometimes we watch old movies in the dark

An oasis that needs no grave remark

I know this attachment cannot be right.

On our last night Jonni gives me her ring

Lapis lazuli tossed into the snow

The death of hope and nowhere else to go.

What will I take with me, what will I bring?

VII

I return to Macalester, distant

And medicated, unable to write

I could not concentrate. I’ve lost insight.

Nothing comes. I am irrelevant.

Carol, like me, would have returned to school

But someone murdered her by Lake Calhoun

When she was released from Abbott in June.

Summer passed, and the weather grew cool.

No longer the person I was before,

Impatient with the person I became

I wandered in a fog heavy with shame

But carried on instead, a hateful chore.

Withdrawn from the classes that I would fail

I moved from place to place too frequently,

The friends I once had stayed away from me

They talked behind my back. I did not fail

And managed to graduate on the day

I left my long hair in the kitchen sink

And a diploma with my name in ink

Was handed to me as I looked away.