Miracles

Miracles

It’s hard to say when her delusions started
What made impulses go awry
As they jumped from dendrite to dendrite
Some say it’s a chemical imbalance
Others blame genetics
She doesn’t blame anybody
She simply flees from moment to moment
From one attempt to the next
To evade the tormenters set on her destruction

I sometimes hear her mutter
“Run like the wind…like the wind!”
This, a personal memo to herself
A reminder not to rest lest she be destroyed
Chopped into a million pieces, drowned
Shot with poison arrows
Tortured on racks and made to lie for ungodly periods of time
On beds of nails, or in slime and muck until she gives up, lets go
Dies

They’re gonna hang me in the attic tonight, she says to me
Hang me by the neck
Until I am stone, cold, dead
Sit down a minute, I say,
Let’s talk
I let her start because I have to think
It does no good to state the obvious
That there is no attic in this mental hospital
There are no gallows, no racks, no beds of nails

It will happen tonight she says, I will be shot and thrown in the river
It’s all happened before
Did you know I’ve lived one hundred and three lives in the past?
Been tortured and murdered in every one
Maybe this life…one hundred and four
Could be different, I say
She squints her eyes at me as if I am her pursuer
Things are never different, she says
Are you one of them?





If you could have things different,
What would that be like for you
I would eat pancakes, she says
What else would happen, I ask
There would be no more rivers
Maybe you could be safe in
Life one hundred and four, I say
When she looks at me
Her eyes are vacant brown orbs

It is then that I realize
She has no connection with the concept of safety
The word itself is a foreign thing
Has no inkling of how “safe” feels
Makes me wish I could catch a miracle scurrying by
Reel it in by its tail, pop it right into her head
Like in the movies when they show things backwards
Shards of glass reforming into the crystal vase that just took a dive
Returning effortlessly to the polished tabletop

Dendrites would behave as they were meant to
Neurons, synapses would get a complete makeover
Suddenly, there would be a twinkle of knowledge
In those brown eyes
She would laugh, and say, I’ve been so silly all these years!
Not saying it couldn’t happen but
I’ve yet to see a miracle
Instead, I bring her some tea and listen as she tells me
How cold that river is




Joy Arnett
February 2008