I
You came to me that night with singed thoughts
spinning wildly around me as you questioned-
the universe.

I could only watch as you carved madness into scraps of paper.
While your skull met my bedroom wall
again
and again
and again.

Only for you to run into the street and set fire to your findings.
It was then that you spoke to me for the first time that night

I need to go to the hospital.

II
Folding my self into the chairs of the only emergency room I trusted
I counted my breaths.
As your mother counted the ways that this was her fault.

Until they unlocked the maze of doors that lead to your sterile prison.
But there were still no answers,
only therapeutic needles to the hips meant to mute the mania.
But it could only stun yours to sleep long enough to be moved
to a bigger behavioral prison

III
The next three days were a series of
waiting rooms
phone calls
safe words
and locked doors.
Waiting through a supposed 72 hour hold.

But in this world weekends don't count.

And once again I found myself folded into a waiting room
as I met your grandparents.
Immediately forgetting their names
because all I could do was wonder,

If my sanity was falling just as fast as you were.

IV
I found you barefoot in a new pile of paper madness,
careening in a suicide proof wasteland.
Your eyes seared through my sockets as you whispered to me-
I want out.

But your blood was polluted with experimental drugs
and your fingers were twitching for a nicotine fix you couldn't get.

You some how managed to silence your body long enough
to convince them your mind had followed.
And that for you weekends do count.

V
You came back to me no longer singed but burning.
They eradicated your sanity and pretended to send it home with you
in a bottle of pills.

I watched you piece what was left of it back together.
So now we could wade through the remnance-
and wait

for it to all happen again.