Letters from an Institution

The ward beds float like ghost ships in the darkness, the nightlight above my bed I pretend is a lighthouse with a little man inside who wears a sailor cap and tells good old stories of the sea. The little man is me. Perhaps I have a dog called Old Salt who laps my hand and runs endlessly down the circular stairs. Perhaps he bites like sin. I dream of ships smashing the reefs, their bottoms gutting out, the crews’ disembodied voices screaming Help us help us help somebody please and there is no one there at all not even me. I wake up nervous, Old Salt gnawing my flesh. I wake up nervous, canvas bedstraps cutting my groin. The night nurse, making the rounds, says I bellow in sleep like a foghorn. * Nothing moves at night except small animals kept caged downstairs for experiments, going bullshit, and the Creole janitor’s broom whisking closer by inches. In the ward, we all have room for errors and elbows to flail at excitement. We’re right above the morgue; the iceboxes make our floor cold. The animals seem to know when someone, bored with holding on, gives out: they beat their heads and teeth against the chicken wire doors, scream and claw The janitor also knows. He props his heavy broom against his belt, makes a sign over himself learned from a Cajun, leaves us shaking in our bedstraps to drag the still warm and nervous body down from Isolation. * I have a garden in my brain shaped like a maze I lose myself in, it seems. They only look for me sometimes. I don’t like my dreams. The nurses quarrel over where I am hiding. I hear from inside a bush. One is crisp and cuts; one pinches. I’d like to push them each somewhere. They both think it’s funny here. The laughter sounds like diesels. I won’t come out because I’m lazy. You start to like the needles. You start to want to crazy.