Category Archives: mental health

A brain, a heart, and courage

You must’ve been a big man in the schoolyard.

Yes- that is what I think when I watch you with others.

Did you lie in wait for that puny kid who wouldn’t fight back-
who perhaps thought that this was how their life was supposed to be;
who made up stories as to why they came home cut or bruised,
or thought that maybe they really were Ugly, Stupid, Fat?

And I wonder, now, what friends you have,
suspecting that they are of the dime-a-dozen gang,
and how many gatherings you go to and push- push with your loudness.

But you see-
some of us who were moulded in quietness and shame
have kept diaries, physical or spiritual,
speaking at first to some imagined angel who would cry for us,
then draw a sword of flame.

And you see-
some of us have found each other. Yes.

And some of us are Writers.
Something you will never be.

And we have blossomed with a quiet courage,
not of vengeance, but of strength.

So, have a care-
lest you become the one who stands away,
wishing that recess would end.

***

Image: Aleutie/Thinkstock

Good intentions

Daguerreotype is the day,
ancient as I drive.

Beside me she is a ghost,
and I can’t speak to the veil-
the closed idiom of her soul.

Or
I am the ghost
and have simply lost the language
to this often-paved way.

***

They got into the car just the same, even though this was a frivolous trip. Even though she knew his silences sometimes lasted the whole way. Today, though, was a study in differentness. It was his averted eyes, his apparent focus on an imagined point just a few feet away or in the upside-down.

She moves to make small talk but it catches in her throat, knowing that it usually elicits impatience and forced responses, and fearing what it might bring today.
“Why did I make him go? What is wrong?”, she thinks. “I can’t stay quiet. I’m just not that person. No. Not alone, with only my own thoughts.”

They cruise, and he disinfects his hands at alternate stop signs. She pats his knee, leaves her hand there. A hundred, a thousand times this road has known them and been peppered with their tire treads.

“Nick, let’s go home, okay?”…in a voice more coquettish than pleading.

But he drives on, comes to the traffic lights which flash alarmingly as if cautioning against any further advance.

“What’s the way, Beth?”
“Nick, what’s wrong? You know the way.”
“Beth, I can’t. I’m sorry. You need to show me.”

And she cries.

[Image: https://pixabay.com/users/music4life-19559/ ]

Archangel

Once,
within my hearing,
and thinking himself alone,
he said
I wish I were dead.

And I didn’t man up to that.
I god damn kept my hands in my pockets
and shied away from his tortured road.

And now, in my time of life,
I see to it that things are kept clean,
most especially those hard-to-reach places.

Angels are white-winged, I think,
and brook no negligence of care.

And I don’t know where he is now,
or if he can see my compulsion to shine things.
To bring them to bright.

Or if he knows his boy is just like him.