LOCKDOWN ON THE PSYCH WARD

A poem about community in a psychiatric hospital

Do you see this community of souls

Clad in tattered rags of light?

This is my family.

Some of us are broken.

Some of us are healing.

We are all damaged.

But unlike those in the outside world

Who judge us,

Even spouses and siblings with their words

Like a judge’s gavel,

We never judge one another.

We each give kindness.

We each give compassion.

We love.

We laugh.

Do you see this community of souls?

This is my family.

Author's Note

I wrote this during a stay in a combination detox unit/suicide prevention unit. For a short while it celebrated our unity.

Reviews

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

amazing! as i've told you before, probably more than once, i was in the psych ward not many years ago. when i wasnt feeling safe in my own skin, i felt safe inside those walls. for me it was the nurses who were really the most helpful, but i did like the company of my own kind too. on the outside, even today, i can feel so alone - looking around and everyone is OK with life whereas i am no. and thats a loneliness hard to describe, hard to ignore. but in the ICU there were people struggling like me, people wounded like me, and there it was a community. it was the worst days of my life; it was the best days of my life.
thanks for sharing this.


PS i'm a bit busy but i'll get to reading your stories soon

[Michael Sun Bear]

Thanks for sharing Ern. I spent about ten days there I think. There was a group of us that all came in about the same time. Most of us were detoxing in addition to dealing with feelings of suicide. But as we got feeling better we could appreciate that we were a really kind, intelligent, witty group. We found the game Apples to Apples and it became our newest addiction. I had more fun, experienced more healing, than I had in a very long time.