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Literature Text
There is something wrong with your head.
That's what they'll tell you. They have charts, statistics, big words with even bigger meanings to dissect what's going on inside your brain. They break it down to chemicals. They break it down to traumatic experiences, to overwhelming pressure in school or at work. Somewhere inside of your most powerful organ, they tell you, there is a critical piece missing. When your heart goes bad they cut you up with scissors and build you a new one. Other organs can be repaired or replaced. But your brain?
When your brain goes bad they feed you happy pills and lies. They tell you that some day you might grow out of it. They send you to a shrink, where you try to talk away the torture. They can't repair your mind.
But the truth is, what's wrong with your head isn't just the fault of a chain of chemicals that can be shifted back into place. You are a murder victim still walking. There are ghosts trapped inside of you, screaming into the linings of your brain matter. There are ghosts slowly eating away at your inner peace.
And there isn't a doctor in the world who can stop it.
You're sitting in the doctor's office on one of those scratchy cushioned chairs. The doctor, whatever her name is, is speaking gibberish. Her eyes are an Understanding Green. Her lips are a Sympathetic Red. She's reading from a script and handing you stacks of white paper, warm from the printer.
These are your prescriptions. Call your health insurance. The pills will make it better; the bills will make it worse. Call your therapist. Make weekly appointments. Don't forget to take your pills.
Some of the papers are explaining your diagnosis. Explaining what it means, as if you don't already know what it's like to be you. In faded black ink on warm white paper they use small words to describe a suffering you're condemned to. Your brain is broken, and no one really knows why.
They feed you information to trick you into acceptance.But what they aren't telling you is the truth.
You will never know the name of the person inside of you. Or rather, the spirit. He isn't technically a person anymore, not since he died. In the afterlife you aren't human. You only exist.
You are laying awake in bed at night, and it hurts. Your mother is blaming herself.
They don't tell you how he died - how they all died. He was a victim too, of a violent and bloody death. You will never know about his rotting corpse, six feet underground with a bullet hole stitched up for eternity. While his body decays, his spirit is stuck in your skull, torturing you. He is twisting your thoughts, and the doctor tells you that it's just a matter of chemicals. You quit calling your best friend, and she says "just get over it!"
You are are a clock spinning backwards. The ghost in your skull screams.
For the ghost, freedom is a matter of self-induced death. If you jumped in front of that train, if you drove your car off a bridge, if you were drowned and blue, he could escape into the afterlife. But for now, he serves a lifetime sentence in your mind.
The doctors don't know this. Your mother doesn't know this. Your friends don't know this. And most importantly, you don't know this. So you cry and you panic and you read those crumpled up papers that explain to you in simple words what is wrong with your brain. Eat right. Exercise. Get plenty of sleep. Don't forget to take your pills.
Soon, his whispers get too loud.
That's what they'll tell you. They have charts, statistics, big words with even bigger meanings to dissect what's going on inside your brain. They break it down to chemicals. They break it down to traumatic experiences, to overwhelming pressure in school or at work. Somewhere inside of your most powerful organ, they tell you, there is a critical piece missing. When your heart goes bad they cut you up with scissors and build you a new one. Other organs can be repaired or replaced. But your brain?
When your brain goes bad they feed you happy pills and lies. They tell you that some day you might grow out of it. They send you to a shrink, where you try to talk away the torture. They can't repair your mind.
But the truth is, what's wrong with your head isn't just the fault of a chain of chemicals that can be shifted back into place. You are a murder victim still walking. There are ghosts trapped inside of you, screaming into the linings of your brain matter. There are ghosts slowly eating away at your inner peace.
And there isn't a doctor in the world who can stop it.
You're sitting in the doctor's office on one of those scratchy cushioned chairs. The doctor, whatever her name is, is speaking gibberish. Her eyes are an Understanding Green. Her lips are a Sympathetic Red. She's reading from a script and handing you stacks of white paper, warm from the printer.
These are your prescriptions. Call your health insurance. The pills will make it better; the bills will make it worse. Call your therapist. Make weekly appointments. Don't forget to take your pills.
Some of the papers are explaining your diagnosis. Explaining what it means, as if you don't already know what it's like to be you. In faded black ink on warm white paper they use small words to describe a suffering you're condemned to. Your brain is broken, and no one really knows why.
They feed you information to trick you into acceptance.But what they aren't telling you is the truth.
You will never know the name of the person inside of you. Or rather, the spirit. He isn't technically a person anymore, not since he died. In the afterlife you aren't human. You only exist.
You are laying awake in bed at night, and it hurts. Your mother is blaming herself.
They don't tell you how he died - how they all died. He was a victim too, of a violent and bloody death. You will never know about his rotting corpse, six feet underground with a bullet hole stitched up for eternity. While his body decays, his spirit is stuck in your skull, torturing you. He is twisting your thoughts, and the doctor tells you that it's just a matter of chemicals. You quit calling your best friend, and she says "just get over it!"
You are are a clock spinning backwards. The ghost in your skull screams.
For the ghost, freedom is a matter of self-induced death. If you jumped in front of that train, if you drove your car off a bridge, if you were drowned and blue, he could escape into the afterlife. But for now, he serves a lifetime sentence in your mind.
The doctors don't know this. Your mother doesn't know this. Your friends don't know this. And most importantly, you don't know this. So you cry and you panic and you read those crumpled up papers that explain to you in simple words what is wrong with your brain. Eat right. Exercise. Get plenty of sleep. Don't forget to take your pills.
Soon, his whispers get too loud.
Literature
Drizzling
The grey glaze of a
pre-dawn chorus —
blackbirds,
and an overcast aubade.
Literature
My Resume
Good reading comprehension,
adequate typing skills,
adept at mental math and making
statistical graphs from lists of information.
Experience with computer programming,
obsessive organization,
thorough proofreading abilities complemented
by an inclination toward triple-checking.
I can develop fictional hierarchies
to understand the social politics surrounding
and talk for hours about nothing,
rattle off facts about Isherwood, Turing, Nilsen.
Boredom doesn’t affect me,
I read the labels on everything,
pull the clutter out of my closet just
to put it all back in a less ergonomic order.
Three days is the longest I’ve been silent,
Literature
pulses
fear another scratch for whatever sketch
abstraction can be made about our passage:
in some ways it's a statistical imperative
that my shade tickle yours in this sacred accident
universe: illumined my child holds the ramifications
of permanence: crepuscule flowerbuds blossoming
through your green life-giving hands & glossily
pinching the source of the seasons for a fountain
penny & the sunset of wishes: another fatigue:
love's another fatigue: underneath the ecstatic
trembling of this eternal waterfall planet: let us
save it: underneath the lattice language of thousands
of wayward mornings scrambling toward their brightness:
be
Suggested Collections
um. yeah.
© 2012 - 2024 ohsparrowsong
Comments16
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"Her eyes are an Understanding Green. Her lips are a Sympathetic Red."
UGH Y U SO GOOD AT THIS PSYCHO STUFF? Your one-line ending is just... ughhhhh. So many feels.
UGH Y U SO GOOD AT THIS PSYCHO STUFF? Your one-line ending is just... ughhhhh. So many feels.