Ward Stories
Cindy Sostchen
I wasn’t brought in kicking and screaming
nor strapped to a gurney or shackled to a cop
there was nothing illegal stashed in any orifice
when some cold dyke frisked me
at the barbed-wire gate
I defied the laws of triage -
no drugs were found in my urine or my veins
I didn’t jesus-ramble or tell them I was
Napoleon or Courtney Love
in the first hour I was checked for life-threatening illness or
communicable diseases, undressed, weighed,
robed and fed,
assigned a number
the doctors gave me mortar-and-pestle pills and held their
collective breath
were they waiting for me to twitch, blow a fuse,
wail at the window
or dance the hora for them?
a hallucination would have been applauded
but I remained colorless and dormant as a doormat
they recorded all my sighs and every sneeze was sacred
when they learned I was a poet they insisted I write like a
latter-day Sexton, then stole my poems
and combed them for Freudian slips,
for some manic message in Morse Code
(defiant and clever, I wrote well-balanced poems for their consumption
and autographed them with an inverted smile)
I ate just enough to avoid an IV
and too little to be listed compulsive
I was too healthy for the Quiet Room
and too sick for the sidewalk
(the closet was the perfect venue, I curled up against a broomstick
like a cat that is going to die)
the young boys liked me because I was blonde and blase’
I was a ragdoll in their arms
to myself I was amorphous, to them I had the shape of a siren
The Prima Donna of Prozac, the Erotic Neurotic,
they tried to mount me in the dayroom,
so I joined their schizophrenic orgy
and they chanted at my feet
at night I made a shield with the sheets, bunched up in a blanket,
large men, strong as coffee, shined a flashlight in my face by the hour,
they didn’t care if I wet the bed, picked at my scabs, bloodied my lips,
or made love to myself
only that I was still there, breathing, not plotting my escape
I never saw angels at midnight
I slept for months like a groundhog without a shadow
preferring the ridiculous grey of institution walls
to the ominous eye of daylight
a season tossed and turned while they waited for me to crash through the
prism,
to grow weak from the silence
and that’s what I did ...
I tell this story to document the holy war I waged
I confess to anyone who will listen
but, especially, for those who recognize my face
in their mirror
for them I tell my ward stories
* previously in New York City Voices
