the memory’s not vague. blueberry yogurt:
dish of the day every day. the meal planners
and walk-up window doses dealt form to time
as if a promise ring, and then promises
chased themselves; the spin cycle resembled
real life. older mike returned from electroshock
more wiry and rubber-made than when
he rolled out that morning. maybe now
he is dead, or has kids, or is in jail and has kids
he did not kill while hallucinating knifemen.
*
suicide mallory said older mike was smart.
suicide mallory’s white arm was bangled
in red scars. she hid pencils beneath her gown,
slipped out the pink erasers, bit down
the metal sleeves to pretty serrations, carved
an index of incongruences into her skin.
nurses kept her cuffed in gauze. she was lovely
the way agony in the smallest bursts could be.
suicide mallory, hell-bent and permanent,
probably finally ended it. if i hoped to see
anyone of them again: her narrow nose
and a fresh white arm scored with lies
no one can sanitize with betadine.
*
little mike, my roommate, heard five voices—
or nine—personalities i wanted to know,
which the nurses discouraged. nurse doug
had a head like a bean and lips like an eye.
i loved him, his brown arm hair and teal scrubs.
i hated his wife, whose eyes i was sure
were also teal. the best days were doug days.
when the fight girls crushed each other’s
brown cheeks over the cute new
pathological liars, doug pried them apart.
he was the hero driving older mike’s
wheelchair, and i was the damsel lamenting
dainty ankle, hobbled and locked in the guise
of volatile black boy on wellbutrin.
*
i made up voices to be metal like little mike,
but i went tupperware-soft under heat.
mike-with-cornrows came, and nurses loaned
the fight girls nail clippers and beanies
to keep their ears from burning. one night
in family group, mike-with-cornrows
claimed he used to be gay, when frank
(the social worker who was still gay) said
“let’s talk about that” and i fumbled my eyes,
imagined baseballs punctuating sentences.
no-longer-gay mike’s parents half-breathed.
*
my family didn’t make it to family group,
but my cousin mailed me a bear once —
paddington in a yellow hat and blue slicker.
i was fourteen i think. it appalled my doctor
that i hated my own mother, so i hated him
for knowing nothing (baby metalheads hate
soft everything) and requested a new shrink,
some sap who’d let me live in nine west.
but doctors were gods: i could only turn
my back on so many before losing precious
dayroom game privileges. i was listening
for voices to make my case more serious,
but the worst noise was the chess rook
skittering in for the kill along a line and
at a velocity with which, even then, he had
little to do: a hand at the back, as in love
or possession, pieces to claim either way.