stop me if you heard this one before

[ogimyto]

i was fifteen. people used to come to me
in the morning to give me bread
and pills, which i would bless. i would wash in freezing water
like a penitent, and wait.

i couldn't see the great big stained-glass Jesus in the lobby
but i knew even at night he was there,
and every day i saw outside the buds on the trees become
fat marshmallow blossoms and the sky
growing bluer against the iron window screen.

you won't believe this, but people actually fall in love
in the psycho ward. it's true.
a bipolar borderline and a panic manic
used to stay up until lights-out playing rummy
and sharing fixed fantasies.

my notebook pages were covered with lame figures
and fantastic haikus:
"three birds on a wire.
one sings high and one sings low
the other, silent."

i dreamt i was sylvia plath, at a party
and i spilled my drink all over my silk dress.
i built a ziggurat of cards and someone came
and kicked it down in slippered feet.
one day i met a suicidal Catholic schoolboy who told me
his stories once but we mostly studied one another through
a Klonopin miasma as if we were two halves
of one patched ragdoll mind
and they wouldn't let us hug so when i finally went home
we could only look the other in the eye and nod,
knowing.