How do? Got your whole life ahead of you, I could break the ice better, I swear, but you’re young enough to be my son.
Do you get any sleep in here?
We are mirrors, one to the other that keep getting clear, that float like asterisks on the air.
Soap bubbles and epigraphs. Terrified ticks leaping from the ass end of a mule. Saw me in your eyes, for more than an instant your gut might have tossed; sorry, I was going to say, take a slug of Coke. Spoonful of applesauce, we feel better. I saw you writing earlier, was it hard to get a pen? I tried to end myself, they gave me a little nub of number two pencil, A crumpled up envelope.
I swallowed four hundred blood pressure pills. Google insisted folk had gone that way.
I didn’t know. Only made me tired and dizzy.
Then I called an ambulance.
You might say, if you wanna die, why call an ambulance?
I didn’t know.
Ended up here.
They’re giving me Percocet, at least–handfuls of M & M’s and pencil nubs.
A neurologist barged in my room. Then a priest came knocking.
They both saw me eyeballing the window. That’s pure Plexi, and it’s molded to the wall.
Nobody busting through there.
Not without a head of steam.
I wouldn’t do that, to the folk on the ground. The little figures, hugging their own chests, chugging along, on the grand prix sidewalk of the quad. Laconic and looking round, like anybody with a lunch date. I kept thinking of the fire engines, and how I’d be found. Limbs, like ripped by awful
wind. Wind from trees.
Driftwood, shoals of black blood, calf-high and breathing.
Kid. I hope to God you don’t write this down. Those ambulance drivers, with their clipboards, their snide, blithe self right, come forth and judge.
I can tell by your mirror, you are not of them.
You got a life, thank God.
Some filly out there, already loving you. It’s already happened. I’m sorry about that piece of sheep, all that gristle, my whiskers and how it got trapped. I must have come off like some kind of tame boar, in mid sneer. It’s almost time for my pill, there’s German chocolate cake on a tray in the hallway. I don’t know kid, what to say. I would tell you I love you, but I don’t want to get punched in the mouth. Look like you can take care of yourself, and I need these teeth, for life. For the cornflakes in the morning. They’re precious to me. It’s all precious, you see?
Forget what I said, about the pills, and the windows, and pencils and the mirrors.
There’s somebody waiting, son you really need to get out of here.
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