Why do I insist on feeling guilty?
Originally appeared in
the APA's
Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine
Volume 90:2, Winter 1991
Just outside
the asylum,
I step on the snow and hear it
murmur like oppressed voices.
Moments later I sit stiffly
on a grey mattress,
watch your eyes
moving in their sockets
trapped like swollen fish.
They are lovely nevertheless, nervous,
with flecks of mercury. The liquid
metal helps me pretend I see
what went wrong with you.
Like moles
granted temporary sight,
we silently watch the sunlight
caged in the window above you.
You hug your pillow, pull at it,
whine, until I suspect it's someone you know.
I am ashamed but I don't touch you,
not even when your eyes
spill their guts onto your cheeks
and you describe memories,
few of them yours.
Now you knead your hands into the pillow,
so I hear the fabric screech and tear.
Then you cradle your head in your hands and mumble
while I watch my wrist
and wait for the hour hand
to move.
Later I will grind my heel into the slush
and wonder if
when I was young
I knew I would be such a coward.