AFTER VISITING A FORMER STUDENT IN A PSYCHIATRIC UNIT
I walk the clinic’s “Prayer Trail” flower beds
before my drive home. Though my student seemed
marooned by her mood-stabilizer meds,
she smiled (and I smiled back) until she screamed—
the room, she swore, was burning. When Breton
asked Gorky over dinner if he dreamed
in colors, Gorky stared and crunched a crouton.
What did he see, Breton asked, in his oils?
Gorky grabbed an artichoke left on
his plate and said, “You see leaves, I see owls.”
I saw my student painting a birdfeeder
she must’ve made: Q-tips she dabbed in bowls
of pigment, drool strung like a fishing leader
from her mouth held open as her weak neck shook.
I told her once that even the best reader
may find a mirror in an open book.
Others find a window. The class became
too quiet. Most students flashed a vacant look.
She raised a shy hand and I called her name.
Then she said a line I still repeat today:
a window and a mirror are the same.
This morning, her face drained to a chalky gray,
she showed her wrist. She looked a decade older,
her pupils inky as a polished Steinway.
Before he ended it, Gorky grew bolder—
pacing again from house to barn that spring,
a coil of hemp rope hanging from his shoulder.
He wanted his wife to see him struggling.
To stop him, she waved over their youngest daughter:
“Help Daddy—look, he’s making you a swing.”
(Printed with permission of the author.)
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