Forgiveness

It was just after lunch time on Ward B at the Belleview Psychiatric Hospital in southwest Ohio, and people were moving about in the common area, putting away their lunch trays and conversing with the nurses and mental health specialists. Others were talking with their case workers or waiting to meet with the psychiatrist. Seated on an elevated, blue acrylic chair, was a striking looking young man. His long hair, which was unwashed, was light brown and curly, and seemed to spiral up like a flame above his head. His face was pale and somewhat thin, with angular features that gave him an appearance of intrepid intelligence. This was only heightened by his very large and chaotic eyes, which moved very rapidly as if he were piecing together a puzzle in the air in front of him. Everything about him displayed calm, even sedation, except his eyes. He sat with his arms on the arm rests, and his hands were very small and very white. No one seemed to take note of the young man, despite the fact that his eyes projected intense anxiety.

A male nurse—brawny and completely bald—was talking with a patient nearby. He was advising the patient—a sallow, gaunt, dark-haired woman who seemed to be vibrating with anxiety—to take a PRN. “I know you have concerns about side-effects,” the brawny nurse told her. “But your doctor has assured me that your PRNs are safe for you to take. You may have some constipation at the very worst…”

The young man, overhearing this conversation, suddenly leaned forward in his chair and stared at the side of the nurse’s face with wide, condemning eyes. The nurse noticed him, and seemed perturbed, but he returned to his conversation. The young man kept staring, and when the nurse looked at him again, he looked at him with even more concern. The nurse excused himself from the woman and approached. 

“Are you OK, Jeffery?” the nurse asked. Jeffery stared up at him, now sitting up very straight, in a posture that suggested fear. “What’s wrong?” the nurse persisted. He spoke in a very calm, affable tone. Jeffery didn’t respond. He seemed frozen in fear. The nurse looked at him quizzically. “Do you want someone to talk to?” he asked. Jeffery shook his head. “OK,” said the nurse. “I’ll just leave you be for now.” The nurse turned around and went back to the woman he had been speaking with. After they had reconvened their conversation, a loud, deep, ferocious cry was heard. Everyone in the room turned to see what it was. Jeffery was seated in his chair, looking horrified.

“Demons!” he suddenly cried. “They’re all demons!”

The nurse went over to him. “What’s going on?” he asked in a tone that suggested less affability and more aggression than before. Jeffery stood up, suddenly and violently, and began pointing his finger in the nurse’s face.

“You’re a demon!” he yelled, even more violently than before. “I can see your horns!” He began to look around, ferociously. He was practically foaming at the mouth. “We’re being ruled by demons! The angels are being ruled by demons! What kind of world is this? Were we really brought here to be slaves to the devil? To take the devil’s pills?” Again, he turned to the nurse. “You bring us here so that you might enslave us, so that you might be free to live your devilish lives! Without us here, what are you? You’re demons. They’re demons, and they have made a mockery of God’s great Earth!” 

The nurse looked over at a tall, stout man with a gray beard. He nodded at him, and the bearded man nodded back. Suddenly, the two men moved in on Jeffery, and grabbed him. As Jeffery was pulled away by the two men, he shouted: “This is how they do it! Once you see the truth, they take you away and inject you! Don’t forget what’s happening here! These demons will make slaves of us all!”

Jeffery was brought into a seclusion room, where the two nurses held him down on a bed with restraints. As Jeffery fought to break free, he caught the eye of the bald nurse. Suddenly, his body relaxed. “I’m sorry,” Jeffery said, and began to weep. “Forgive me.”

The expression on the nurse’s face softened. “There is nothing to forgive,” he said, just as a separate nurse injected him with a sedative. As he went under, those words—“There is nothing to forgive”—resonated in the darkest corner of his mind.

Prayer for the Dead

My soul in exile, I walk the streets
Slowly crafting a prayer to call it back.
The giant oaks steal my breath,
As do the graves and the iron fence.
The people, their eyes like vacuums,
Are enigmas, fleeing from their holiness.
I move about with all the aimlessness of dust.
Now dusk, the church bells resound.
I gaze up just in time to see a flock of birds
Fly over my head.
This prayer is no longer for my own soul,
But for the souls of the dead.

The Depths of Love

There are things that cannot be explained,

Because though we can see them,

They cannot be touched,

As they are constantly moving away from us

At a faster rate than we can go.

Love is one of those.

We can merge with body,

We can merge our souls.

But love, that thing 

That unites us, runs so deep

We cannot fathom the depths

And so, we keep merging bodies, 

We keep merging souls,

Even as the depths of love

Grow ever deeper. 

The Wanderer

God speaks to the wanderer:

“Shelter me in your heart.

Be free in your wandering

And your course will be direct.”

The wanderer replies:

“My heart wanders with me,

Therefore you, too, are a wanderer.

Do you know where you are going?

Is there a plan behind all this madness?”

God speaks:

“The plan is yours.

I am merely here to guard it.”

The wanderer replies with silence.

He listens to his heart 

And discovers its rhythm.

He feels the rhythm of his steps.

Though he wanders, there is a stillness.

It is God’s voice, speaking to him.

Justice

A dark error that spins nations

Into the abyss—a living man will live

Without paying homage to the dead,

A whole nation acting blindly

Toward an unholy goal, to peter out

And die by slowly destroying 

All that it once held sacred

For the sake of “purity.”

No man is pure, and no nation.

Pure is death, and death is sure.
Let it come as it will, without these 

Foolish recriminations. Your brother

In rags sees you wasting

Time in destroying what is sacred,

Sees you wasting what would be

Sustenance if it were not wasted.

He laughs because he knows

His labor feeds his body

And the bodies of his children.
They will grow strong from his work,

While your children will grow weak

With satiety and complaisance.

So you lash out against those 

Whose children will know

The power granted them

By hunger and discipline.

You will say their values are wrong,

And dangerous to society.

You will set a flame to burn them,

But they will not go without a fight.
They are strong, and young, and willing

To die for what they believe is right.

Your rage born of hatred

Will be no match for their rage

Born of a need to survive.

The fires you set will then burn your own homes,

You will be caught in the traps you set for others.

Your brothers will turn their backs on you,

Desperate to save what they have.

You will be forced, now with nothing,

To leave, and who will want you 

After all that you’ve done?

Forced to wander, you will know plight.

But fear not, for a new nation is being born,

One which knows the power of forgiveness.

And you will be forgiven, but still

A great shame will weigh you down

For many a generation. Thus, you must repent,

Do justice unto all. But the greatest justice

Will be done to yourselves

In doing right by your neighbors.

A Night at the Bar

I was at home on Friday night, trying to write, and failing miserably to do so. I found myself writing, over and over: “Go out.” I tried to resist this notion, because I knew from past experiences, “going out,” which actually just meant going to a bar by myself, always ended in a feeling of abject humiliation and despair. But I told myself, finally, that I needed to go out and “act a fool” because I needed fuel for my writing. Not to mention the fact that I was in need of cigarettes. With these two excuses in my possession, I told my dad I was leaving, called an Uber, and went up to Ludlow. It was around eleven o’clock.

After buying two packs of cigarettes at the UDF, I walked over to Arlins bar. I could tell as I walked there that all was not right within me. I don’t know. Maybe there was just something about that part of town. I grew up there, and had many adventures there. It was too familiar, like a used-up prostitute. It felt diseased. I felt diseased. I should have trusted that feeling, but I told myself that I had to give it a go. Why? Because I was simply incapable of going anywhere else. It was as if I felt the need to penetrate to the heart of my past, as if I could somehow dig my way to the core of all my problems and, once there, fix them, make them right. But what I really did, I think, by going down there, was open up old wounds. Old wounds that were better left untouched. In any event, I went to the bar, convincing myself that I was doing good, that I was “facing my fears.”

When I got there, it was pretty crowded. I sat at the end of the bar and ordered a beer. I drank for a while, then moved down to the other end of the bar, which was less populated. I was looking around. There was one particularly attractive young woman who I noticed. She came up right beside me and ordered a drink. Naturally, I misinterpreted this as her being interested in me, though I said nothing. She sat down with another young woman behind me at a table. I continued to drink. Then I saw a man I knew—Peter, an older man I’d met in an art class I had taken a couple years prior. He was now a practicing artist, and we talked shop for a while. I got bored with him and went outside. The deck was crowded. Two young women were talking with two young men. One of the women was very attractive—a sophisticated type, with short, stylish blonde hair and a pronounced jaw—and she was talking with a young man who was somewhat “artsy.” He had tattoos and piercings (his piercings were the subject of their conversation) and he seemed to be charming her. This angered me. I sat in a chair and smoked, feeling bitter as they talked on and on without a hitch, leaving me no room to interject, fool that I was. After a while, I went back inside and ordered another beer. I stood around, sheepishly, until I felt drunk, then went back outside. I approached one of the young men, the one who was less attractive—actually, he was quite the donkey-faced schmuck—and I pounded my hand on his shoulder and yelled: “This machine does not stop, my brother!” Naturally, they all looked at me like I was insane, which, of course, I was. The young man made some snide comment like, “How low can you go?” “Oh, I can go low!” I shouted, looking at the less attractive of the two women. “I can go lower than anyone you’ve ever seen!” 

“Prove it,” said the attractive woman.

The donkey-faced man said something about doing the limbo. “How low can you go?” He repeated. So I did a little dance where I crouched to the ground. I stood up, feeling utterly humiliated. The attractive woman said it was time to go, and she said goodbye to the attractive man. It seemed that they were made for each other, the way they looked into each other’s eyes. When they left, the donkey-faced man said something about how I knew how to make an entrance, and I actually apologized like a damn fool for “making the women leave.” They asked each other if they knew me, and, both coming to the understanding that neither of them did, they went inside. I sat down on a chair and smoked, and talked to some dumbstruck Indian guy, poking him as if with a stick like the piece of shit that he was. Finally, I got bored again and went back inside. I spotted the attractive women who I had noticed earlier and began clandestinely following her around the place, trying to think of something to say. Finally, after she had sat down near the front window with her friend, I made my move. She was enjoying her conversation with her friend, but I didn’t care. I would interrupt their conversation, because what I had to say was so very important.

“Excuse me,” I said. The woman looked at me, taking a sip of her beer. “I just wanted to say that you are by far the most beautiful woman here tonight.”

She almost spat out her beer.

“What about me?” Said her friend.

I laid my hand on her back and said, by way of appeasement: “You’re not bad either.”

They both let out sarcastic sighs, as if to say, “Yes, you have dug your own grave well!”

“She’s my girlfriend,” said the less attractive one.

I looked at her. She was smiling, but dead serious. “Really?” I said, and looked at the pretty one. She too was smiling, and she nodded. “Well,” I said. “Cheers to that, then.”

“Cheers.”

I walked away. I finished my beer and left, making sure that the beautiful woman didn't see me. When I got home, I was depressed. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I finally got to sleep near dawn, and woke up at three in the afternoon. I was depressed. My parents could tell. My father asked me whether something had happened at the bar. I told him that something had happened, but I didn’t want to go into details. The next couple of nights were very long, and I wasn’t able to write. I eventually decided that it would have been smarter to have called my friend Chris rather than go to the bar by myself. Crazy people should not be left to their own devices.

Big Changes

            Mary Trueheart had to go to the grocery store to get milk. Her four-year-old daughter, Lisa, drank it up faster than water. Because her husband was still at work, and Lisa was being very demanding, she had to bring Lisa with her to the store.

            Once they arrived, Mary took Lisa’s hand and led her to the back of the store where the dairy products were kept. The little girl kept whining and asking her mom when they would have the milk. “Soon!” he mother replied, and hurried Lisa as fast as her little legs could go. 
            As Mary was looking for the right carton of milk, she noticed a man nearby loading up his shopping cart with cheeses. He was very overweight, and his purple polo shirt was much too small for him, and his tan cargo shorts much too large. He had an unkempt neck beard and his light, reddish-brown hair was curly and poofy, in the form of an afro. There was also a long stain running down his shirt from the chest. He moved slowly, and cumbrously, and his face was pockmarked. His eyes seemed flattened and devoid of vitality, giving him a deranged look. Still, there was something familiar about him to Mary. And then she suddenly realized, it was Tanner Meeks, her old high school boyfriend. He had changed dramatically, but there was no question it was him.

            He finished loading his cart with a vast array of cheeses. The cart itself was full of junk food—frozen pizzas, tv dinners, candy, ice cream, etc. He started to walk toward Mary, his mouth open as if he were unable to breathe through his nose. Apparently, he didn’t recognize Mary, who watched him pass, deliberating whether to say hello.

            She did not say hello. She took the carton of milk and then her daughter’s hand, and went to the checkout line. As she paid for the milk and led Lisa out of the store, her mind was preoccupied with sad thoughts. She remembered what Tanner had been like in high school—a young, athletic football prodigy with a winning smile, full of ebullience and bawdy humor, with a great, loud laugh that expressed boundless enthusiasm for life. By the looks of him now, it seemed to Mary he hadn’t laughed in years. How had things changed so much?

            As she put Lisa into her car seat, the little girl smiled and sang: “Milk for me! Milk for me! Then I’m going to have to pee!”

            Mary laughed and clipped her into the seat. As she went around to open the driver door, she spotted Tanner through the window of the grocery store, pushing his cart full of groceries. For a split second, through the glass, he appeared as he once had—the big, goofy kid she had fallen in love with. But the illusion didn’t last. She frowned, got into the car, shut the door, and looked back at Lisa in the rear-view mirror. She was looking out the window, a slight smile on her face. The dying sunlight was shining on her rosy skin. Mary started the car and drove away.