It began innocently enough,
A look, a sigh, a caress.
He said the spirits told him to do things.
He had to eat in order to feed them.
Schizophrenic, you know.
I took it metaphorically, of course.
After all, all things possess a spirit.
The ancients all knew that what we consume,
filled us with that being's spirit.
Vast woods surrounded the home.
Residents often ran away for an hour, a day, a week.
The skeletal trees silhouetted against the blood moon that night
were nothing out of the ordinary.
The nearly incoherent muttering of old ones coming
and demanding sacrifice amidst ramblings about eternity,
children, infinity, death, narcotics, black and white,
creation and death did not strike me as abnormal.
Perhaps it should have.
I cannot even bear to remember the horror I found,
that eerie I went to check on him,
even as the full moon shone through the dusty window panes.
I shudder sitting here in in this lonely psych ward,
afraid of what will happen when my insurance runs out.
24 hours and the clock is ticking; damnable it is, in its incessant ticking.
Still, I hear whispers in the night, despite the clozaril and the clonazepam,
despite the seroquel and depakote.
I don’t have to look at the windows
to know what is beating against them.
It's the same beating that was in that house,
where the moonlight could barely shine
through those dusty windows.
They are waiting, and I can no longer wait.
I was damned the day I looked into his eyes.
Those damned, unforgettable eyes.
Sasha Mink (© 2009)
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