My friend on the unit, in the silent room crying. Fists beating against glass. let me out let me out he pleads.
His Tears, a flash flood. I was sixteen. He was too.
Fourteen year old girls having flashbacks of fathers brothers uncles raping them
The thirty minutes after a meal that the bathroom is locked. I’m sorry you gotta hold it she tells the squirming girl
A girl pacing the main evaluation room, dark purple ring encircling her neck
Old man never not crying shaking he falls to the floor, collapsed and no one notices but me
Sadie being restrained with murder in her eyes, screaming, struggling against three bodies holding her down
Fuck You she yells over and over. At fifteen
Jessica telling me about the time she cut off her own nipples
Booty juice. Nuff said.
A woman peeing on the floor right in front of me i can’t help to notice the puddle growing
You raped my mom she yells at staff over and over
Girl throwing a glass vase at staff
Same girl, trying to stab my roommate to death with markers. Room, colors all on walls, a psychosis mural
Then there are the screamers
I know this because I too, I too am a screamer
The Giggler, as they called him, who looked like the joker on the face of a card,
but he makes perfect sense when you actually listen, things he says are profound
“Up! She’s naked and shitting on the floor”
A deep cut on the side of his neck. “I couldn’t go through with it.”
He tells me “my mom found me in the bathroom, blood everywhere.”
Not two feet from me, he launched himself onto her, started poundin’ on her, nearly beating her to death.
Frozen, I watched as blood pooled from her head. the only thought in my mind,
whirling like a shameful fucked up merry go round, that night, in the dead of dark
–Vira Sofia Pitkofska
Poetry