Dealt

So many drunk nights in the warm Manhattan air, summer gives us a flash of its long legs and I say Yes to every invitation because suddenly my heart wants to. The streets fill up with people --Where were they all winter?--and the Hudson River Promenade moves slower than seventh avenue on Friday afternoon, but the magnolias bloom in the courtyard, so how could anyone be angry.

She writes to say she is back in the in-patient psychiatric ward. Schedules of electro-shock therapy erase every other item in the calendar. They say I can go home tomorrow for a while, to visit, but I'm scared to. Images of cold 1950's hospital hallways and long, cold baths fill my mind but she says they are all so kind. I long to be healthy, and hopeful, and happy. We were children together once. We didn't fit in the molds, but who could have seen this crick in the road?

We run into madness one way or the other,
when really we're just afraid of going home.