A Conversation With Sanity Poem by Jack Otterberg

don't ask me how I got entangled
in musky green scrubs and
dimly-lit rooms
where the mad confirm their faces
in skinny mirrors.
there's no reason for that perfect sanity-
that voice you hear
at night, coaxing you to sleep.
sometimes you come to learn that death.
when death knocks on your fortified window,
you just stare there, impeccably
perplexed.

and the nurses curse at gas prices
while I sit here on a lumpy green chair
figuring out whether or not
to eat or stare up at the passive clouds.
did I say how suicide moves?

it doesn't. it strips out all the meat, the
juice from the bones, the blood, and,
eventually, the soul.
until you're left wondering what
cosmic jest you've walked into
today.

which is why I came here—
staying safe from that toothless chasm
inside. until I learn how to
cope. and do you know what coping is?

I'd think it a voice.
how do I explain that— that
counterattack which brings you
back to the heat of forgetting.

forget the memory of your
mother's teardrops burning her
cheek, as she welcomes your
head on her blue-jean lap.
she walks through the ages
of happiness you had-
perhaps a cool shimmer of
pool water in your hair.
you'd step out into the absent
June night, fireflies igniting
a glow as you clutch one in your palms.
maybe you turn around to see
those impressive years
moved you to this stillness now—
this room who says you were
too kind to be sane.

I think that's how it goes—
the world owes me a small forgiveness
for being kind.