leaves tumble
down from
half dead trees
basement dorm
small windows
barely let any
light in
it’s 3am and
you are
wide awake
call a hotline,
it’s no help
so make a choice
to do absolutely
anything
to not feel the
pain you’re in –
blink
and you’re
in the back
of a police car
blink
and a nurse is
buzzing you
in through
double-locked
doors
blink
and they are
strip searching you,
taking away razors
still dripping
with blood,
accounting for
every last scar,
marked off
on a chart
doctor prescribes
a concoction of pills
that put you
into a depressed
stupor
eight days later
and they let you
out of the
looney bin
except it’s right back
to the next treatment
facility because
you are so
irrevocably
damaged
and no one knows
what to do with you
the next year is spent
shuffling in and out
of places with crisp
white walls and
art tables,
gentle staff that
do their best
but it’s like you’re
behind a pane
of glass and
no one can
get to you
to help
every day feels
the same,
doing every last
self-destructive thing
you can think of
to try to escape
the demons screaming
in your head
yet eventually
it just gets old
the running the
cutting the starving
the purging
it is all just
too much and
maybe – just
maybe,
there might
be another way
turns out
they can keep
you breathing
but you have to
decide if you
truly want
to live
and you discover
there is no magic cure
no perfect pill
to swallow
that will erase
all of the pain
you’ve been
through
only an unexpected
smile that finds its
way across your lips,
a warm breeze
dancing through
your hair
a deep sigh
that fills
your lungs
with air
when it is winter,
you feel like
it will never
be warm again
and how wonderful
it is to be proven
wrong.