By Lillibit Ray
Two doors automatically close,
and lock behind me.
I stand inside a narrow hallway,
surrounded by so much white
it blurs together,
White floor, white walls, white uniforms,
white lies in the attempt
to create some form of comfort.
Seventy-two hours in a psych ward
with seventy-one left to go
for our rejected minds
to ponder our circumstance.
We know who we are
while so few others do.
I see a woman’s spirit
gently float to the ceiling,
dissociated from the beaten body
that has enclosed the broken specter
that she has become.
She lifts off from sukhasana
leaving her memories behind
to at once feel free,
and she summons the spirits
of the rest of us shut inside here,
and we dance on the white ceiling with her,
transcending a world of being misunderstood
to commune in a shared reality.