Saint Patrick’s Day tasted green, like cold
beer after bottomless beer. I was searching for a way
to the end. Plucked shamrocks faded to a broken
gray. They called me dead with only enough color
to float my folded body to the beds of McLean.
I was too cold and too blue to sleep that night.
The morning arrived disguised in perpetual midnight.
Threadbare blankets and gowns barely covered my cold
shadow. I was forced to a breakfast line. Shaylyn
told me it tasted better than it looked. She hated the way
the staff sent sorry-smiles over gray slop. I quickly saw the color
of the pity they served me, and I started breaking
out in cold sweats. We were a broken
people in a place made to hold us. That night,
they served Sloppy Joes, and they gave me a paper lion to color.
I called it "killing time in place of myself." They called it "protection from the cold."
White cinder blocks kept us confined. Reaching level 2 was a highway
to fresh air, fresh faces, and our stolen shoelaces. Mom
visited me from 1 to 3 and 6 to 8. We paced the ward, and sometimes George
(from room 309) followed behind. It seemed he was trying to break
even. Too much lost, not enough gained. He begged us to take him far away.
We apologized in smiles. There are too many bleeding arms in this black night.
I covered my existing wounds, feeling my way by the cold
trails of open veins. We never acknowledged that the color
of the scars won’t match our skin in the light. Color
me crazy, just like Janice,
with scars from twenty-seven years in this place. The cold
beds stiffened her back. The first time, they told her she just needed a break.
As a self-proclaimed lawyer, a doctorate of her own invention, each night
she built her case of escape in colored pencil. Always
colored pencil and never a pen. We always
cut our food with spoons instead of knives. The color
when we hit rock bottom is concave, and it feels like night.
To the people in that breakfast line: Shaylyn. George. Jamie.
Richard. Carmen. Janice. Me. We are a broken
people who met in a place that was supposed to contain us. We know how cold
it can get at night, or when you finally reach that last dollar. The way
out of this cold world isn’t always found in a hospital or the grave. Sometimes, it’s the color
of our eyes or the sound of our names that mend us. We are learning to be unbreakable.