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Another Day Working Ward 101

1

New patient: nineteen years old
typical Border Line Personality

Her clit ring had to be taken out during the strip search
The point could be used as a weapon
or for self-mutilation

Nurses shook their heads at railroad tracks
Lightening bolts stretched from wrist to breast
to waist white across brown skin

She broke the noses of two men her first day
with a manual typewriter
Cartilage exploded like wet red fire-crackers
They laughed about it later over beers
“I’d still fuck her,” they said

The grasping for flesh
didn’t stop until the pills kicked in

We used to call that magic.

2

We wondered if someone had forgotten the microwave
and burnt popcorn again
We saw smoke and thought, shit, not another fire
The fires come often, and small, here
It never takes long to snap weak flames out

This fire burned
It swelled into our blood until we thought we would combust
spontaneously, or boil
Smoke thick as dirty Vaseline waltzed in the halls
The smell of popcorn became the stench of burning hair

“Adrian is on fire,” one of our sociopaths laughed

She had taken the blue head of a match and lit herself to flame

Goddamn it, someone said

We tried like fools to pat her out
Our hands and face blistered
our hair singed and hissed like snakes

She died screaming from her own flame
taking bits of our flesh, stuck to what burns, with her

It’s the only hope any of us have.