Lizzy Burnam 🐞

The psych ward had all-you-can-eat string cheese 
and boxes of tea leaves in every flavor. 
A boy with a fleece blanket draped over his shoulders
and bugged-out eyes behind coke bottle glasses
explained to me each tea in great detail:
the ideal temperature for brewing Oolong, 
the caffeine levels in black tea relative to coffee,
the medicinal benefits of chamomile before bedtime. 
Later, as I pulled apart the mozzarella fibers
and waited for the psychiatrist to take her turn 
speaking to me—very softly—as one might speak 
to an untamed horse, I heard him screaming:
Living! Living! Living! That's what I'm doing!
The nurses dragged him to the end of the hall
and locked him behind a door with a little round window 
like a submarine porthole. They handed out
the same worksheet in group therapy every morning:
On a scale of red frowny face to green smiley face,
how do you feel? I circled the flat yellow expression
in the center, lukewarm as a cuppa left too long,
daydreaming about the weight of a real silver spoon.