I met a woman in the psych ward and something felt like that should have been me.
She had gauze wrapped around her wrist like I had felt so many times before, but these wounds had kept her here.
I had been sent home.
I never needed stitches, but I couldn't have a needle,
so I was always left with the common thread of being sent home.
I was never taken seriously until one day I was,
but I'd forgotten how to take it any way at all.
The woman in the ward would wander the halls,
hauling her hidden distress in the dressing.
I wondered if she'd also been told 'it wasn't that bad,'
but if she was, she might have been home by now.
Something keeps asking why she hadn't been me.
I was so confused about where they said I should be and didn't know how to prove if I knew where that was.
Dismissed from all urgency by nurses with certainty, but implored by all others who glanced at my wrist;
each party so confident I'd be in hands that were better as long as those hands weren't theirs.
I was scrubbed from this place of belonging while being too stable for the people in scrubs.
Maybe that's why I stay as close as I can to the psych ward while still holding the key card to leave:
I had lingered in limbo too long to know which direction to go. What do I believe? Which loss do I grieve?
I had proved myself too healthy; I had proved myself too sick.
I was a revolving door patient who never got admitted.

I get anxious when I don't have a toothbrush in my purse.
I leave behind the house and the ability to take care of myself if I don't come back.
Every time I get in my car I wonder if it will take me somewhere else that night,
even if I know I'm coming home.
It's different now; I sleep in the same bed most nights and I brush my teeth at the same sink,
but I meet the same eyes that I used to see in different mirrors every day.
I stalled in more restrooms than I could count because every other door was shut.
I learned that Starbucks is better than Tim Hortons; there's a place to put your purse and the water tastes nicer,
and if people see you leaving with a seven-dollar latte they assume you're going to the same place you came from.
I buried my toothbrush at the bottom of my bag.
The baristas would ask about my plans for the day, and if I'd had the words, I might have said, "I'll get back in my car and see where it takes me."
It would have sounded poetic. It might have been enviable,
and I might have felt a little less homeless.
But how dare I say that thankless word--
I was always met with a laugh and a correction: "You'll never be homeless; look at all the places you can go."
And I was grateful, I was grateful, I was grateful,
but they never knew how lost it felt to sleep on different beds and couches and know it was because of how lost you felt.
I was welcomed in every different home except the one I was forced from,
and every different shower I cried in saved me a little bit more.
But everyone was always amused at how prepared I was when I pulled out my purse.
They didn't know it was because I didn't have any other place to keep my toothbrush.