In the psych ward (Two Pieces)

In the psych ward, you gasp
with every waking, gulping breaths

through a stiff neck and bruised senses
of self — kaleidoscopic and unyielding

and in freeflow as you’ve grown inept
at settling into any which one — afloat,

dangling, terrified at the prospect of who
you might become. In the psych ward,

you gasp when the orderly tackles you
as you try to run down the hall and

away from the future you know
will be different now, forever,

running away from being
as much as anything. In the psych ward,

you remember you’re not
in the psych ward anymore,

that it’s been five years, that you’re
just dreaming, again, always again.

After six nights you begin to make sense
of life for its cling, its barely,
its holding on, to accept
what’s given even

in cataclysm. Some definitions are best
in their inverse: to teach the human
it is what is not animal. To thrive
is such a rainbow ambition

and here it doesn’t rain. I feel blurred
and blotted now at the parts of me
that make concrete thought: once time becomes
a reality you can’t hold

in your hand | water | some things
become anywhere and not
where you want to be. All we see
is already dead, grown past its welcome, resting

on meaning that will be made
in retrospect— every living
biography on Wikipedia assumes
it won’t be one forever.

In the psych ward, time teaches you
not to trust it, that our rooms outlast us,
to feel your container. Not every song about
death has to be a sad one.