Observations From a Life Institutionalized

A poem about being in rehab.

Observations From a Life Institutionalized

I sit in the shower with my head against the wall

and play a game I played as a child:

Sitting in the car while my parents went shopping,

I’d watch the droplets of rain coalesce

until they became swollen and heavy

eventually running down the window pane

and crashing into the wipers.

I would pretend the rivulets were racing each other

and try to guess which would win.

Now I watch them cascade down the shower wall

while streams of warmth run down my back.

I try to feel each drop as it hits me and bounces off,

try to differentiate each experience from the next,

but they fall in a cacophony

without any rhythm I can make out.

I give in and let them blur into a blanket

of warmth wrapped around me.

I look at my belly grown round and soft,

not quite recognizing it as mine,

and I contemplate being in this way station of life.

I feel like the chicken turned to nuggets

that they feed us,

Chopped into pieces and processed,

formed into something new,

something innocuous that bears no resemblance

to the thing it came from.

I feel frozen and pre-packaged.

We dress ourselves up

with hot sauce, salt, and pepper,

trying to make life more appetizing.

We watch the news and tell jokes and make up stories.

We complain about injustice and the counselors and each other

while we wait in line for our phone calls,

life lines to an outside world,

a parallel universe moving at full speed

while we exist time stretched in slow motion,

unable to keep up.

Springs in the couches stick out,

collapsed beneath the weight of our problems, our fears.

Today is a good day.

It’s laundry day.

I’ll have clean socks and underwear soon.

I stand in line and wait

to get my dixie cup of liquid detergent

with its slightly overwhelming artificial fresh scent.

I think of running through the sheets

hanging to dry on outdoor clothes lines

at my grandmother’s house in Mira Mesa

while the person in front of me argues

about his pass getting lost.

I hear the words, but they bounce

off my ears and fall to the ground.

I am thirty years and 1,000 miles away,

waiting, waiting.