Time needs to be boxed up
In a memoir of a time where
And a weeks bleed into the next
But days are their own epic battle.
It grips at the facts yet
Facts are only strong when corroborated.
The voices should have their say, of course.
They lay over the bridge of fiction and agency.
I should hem them down into a legible form. I cannot grasp the metaphysical resonance of these clear -but- incoherent voices. There is little to personify.
In the hospital I think of short portraits of people in crisis,
Their eyes are as blank as mine. They inhabit an inner world that is seeping into the outside in the form of a crying spell, a violent outburst, a spell repeated over and over.
I could chronicle their eyes in paintings.
It is a blessing that they take your phone, it’s illegal to take photos of patients.
I wonder if there is a way I could defend our legacy, my legacy
Perhaps coping for years is impressive to someone who has never had the humiliation of coping.
A person with severe mental illness is isolated. I find that in trying to capture my experience in words, I am provoking some beast that refuses to de defined. That tells me a little about this mysterious beast: they are quite afraid of the light.
So in the spirit of a dragon slayer (one which had a nurturing relationship with said dragon at one time) I will stab away with my dinner forks, my paint brushes, my combs, my hiking sticks, my whittling knife, my needle-nosed pliers. And my pen.
And I will as calmly as I can stretch this recoiled eel into a narrative.