They Don't Call Them Asylums Anymore (Part V-Reprieve)

⚠️Trigger Warning: The following poem contains subject matter pertaining to alcoholism, self-harm and voluntary psychiatric hospitalization⚠️

I call this one

The Reprieve--

because this is the

only time I go the hospital

without being mistreated.

Or maybe I am mistreated

but am just too drunk

to remember anything.

That's the marvellous thing

about liquor, isn't it;

how it anesthetizes the pain

(I can hardly feel the scissors

as they unearth the rosettes

taking root beneath my thighs)

and any recollection of pain.

While I wait to be seen by a doctor,

I read a vintage Fox and the Hound

comic book.

I get to the strip where

Todd's mother is shot.

"Oh, Bambi's mom died."

I slur.

"You're not reading Bambi,"

my own mother reminds me.

Funny how a girl who wants

nothing more than to

die

is always miscalculating death.

Image Source:

Effy Stonem drinking gif (n.d.). [image] Available at:

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