Schizophrenic

by jlsavell

How appropriate-
the song playing in the background
as she arrives three hours late

"She's broken and she's beautiful"

Her face, plump and full-
beautiful really
Innocence set in stone,
like the carved cherubs above a gravestone

She smiles through tears,
wheezing out frantic apologies,
for the weight of her shadows
won't let her breathe

"My medications have run out
I am not myself,
leaves me feeling as if my brain is on fire
and that curtain of light
I stitched closed to keep
the dark at bay, plucked away
Just plucked away!
My demons do this, like a passionate harpist plucks the funeral pyre
of dead things"

My heart feels nauseated for her
There's nothing I can do nor offer to ease her pain
Perhaps, drag her to the altar of atonement
where bloviating zealots portray the drama of cleansing a possessed soul?
Such a laughable sport

Again she talks
"My bed, it promises me relief
Keeps me swaddled in the comforter
of sadness and what if

The clock is ticking, but what it's really doing
is exclaiming in bullet points
.What if I take a shower, and It takes me down the drain?
.What if he finds me naked and sees the worms oozing from my skin?
.What if the bridge collapses and he's there pushing me under and I drown-
drown in the enormity of my missing
pieces?"

There's nothing I can say.
I am mute.
I can't wrap my brain
around Schizophrenia

All I can do- is wrap my arms
around her worth,
even though I hate to feel
It's all too much to reconcile her darkness

Could I, would I
swim her ocean:
the pallid depths of reason,
the suffocating swell of delusions?

She is a country of goodness,
a blossoming orchard of cherry blossoms
covering the crypt of the forsaken

What is sanity anyway?
At least she has a name for her demons
I don't
Do you?