What they don't tell you-they, the general public, society, doctors, your best friends-
Is that a hospital is more than four white walls
It exists beyond the doctors in starched coats hanging to their knees
Beyond the mutterings of schizophrenic people as they walk by
Beyond the daily pills given and tongues pulled up directly after
Beyond the strip searches, the vitals taken, the evening bed-checks
A hospital lives in stigma
Stigma where you are the outcast, the
Mental patient, the
Crazy one.
A hospital lives in your mind,
In the tormented nightmares you wake up from
Shaking and drenched in sweat
Sheets twisted between white fists
A hospital lives in your gait
The way you swish your hips away from people sometimes
Because you don't want them to know your darkest secret,
Know where your barriers form, where they wall the world around you.
A hospital lives in the faint scars attached to your wrists,
Your stomach
Your thighs
Your calves
Your heart
A hospital becomes a sort of monster in this way
It rots in your memory
Tells you about that one time when things almost ended
Tells other people that you are off, but not in a way anyone can see
Unless they look hard enough
A hospital
Is supposed to heal wounds, Not
Create them.

I pried out my own skin
wide open
with needles dipped
in cheap india ink; I dabbed
at the black mixed with red
staining my fingers.
Do I do this for the pain,
or to get the poison trickling in
to my skin, to my veins?
A symbol, an alphabet.
Vast meanings that I tried to bestow
upon them hours later
really means nothing at all.

There's the cause and the effect,
which really goes both ways.
The pain for the gain
of the blurred out ink under my skin,
and the gain for the pain
of the sharpness prickling

my ankles, both legs
bare the stain of alcohol tinged
nights.
The skin beneath my eyelids
a darkened haze;
but the tattoo still burns
needle-sharp against it all.

I would've given birth
To you,
Endured whatever
Mothers do.
Instead, I did
What Dads do.

I rocked you
Til my future shook;
Watched you til
I couldn't look.
As you changed,
I changed too,
To do the things
That Dads do.

You were bathed,
Dressed and fed;
I loved you so much
I was saved.

If there's credit,
Well, I get it,
For teaching you to read.
I took the blame
When you got bored
With school's ABC's.

I followed you
In all your roles,
Your teams,
Your solos,
Your trips,
Your shows.
First to clap,
Last to sit;
I taped it all,
From start -
To finish.

I taught you
How to tie a lace,
Ride a bike,
Golf and skate.
When time arrived
For you to drive,
You learned
On standard,
Never stranded,
You came home alive.

Your highs
I took in stride,
By example taught
Humility's pride.
Your lows,
I couldn't internalize,
I dropped my guard
With my eyes.

When Dad's do well
It's a double edge,
The future wedge.
The world
Revealed
Desired you too.
I don't dismiss
What mothers do,
But when Dads do well,
Both lose you.