Asylum Love.

The nurse smiles at you. If you had a coin for each smile in your purse, you could be a rich girl. She moves on, her uniform reaches just below the knee, the black stockings reaching up beyond sight. You watch as she goes from sight catching the last glimpse of her butt as she turns into the other room. You wish she tucked you up at night, wished her fingers moved over the bed to make secure. You wander to the window and look down. Some of the lucky ones have their freedom to walk the grounds, have that stamp of approval, which says they will not attempt escape. You have attempted to escape from the asylum, but they brought you back. Now you’re a prisoner in the locked ward with the nurse’s gaze and keys to keep you bound. Rooks occupy the high trees, gulls inland scratch the sky. A tractor in a far off field makes its slow way across the untilled ground. You sigh. You need a smoke, need some escape from the four walls; the faces of the other loons stare at you as you walk back and forth across the wooden floor, squeezing your hands together, as if you could squash the whole world into a ball, and roll it down the aisle of the locked ward to the far wall. You corner Nurse Nyle and bum a smoke; she has the most beautiful hands you’ve ever seen, would want them to investigate you, you naughty girl, she’d think if she knew. You inhale the lit cigarette, feel it hit the back of the throat, sense it flow and touch the lungs, and glory be to God on high, and walk to the small side window, that shows the drive where the cars and ambulances bring the lost souls and defected minds. They must have brought you at night, because you remember nothing of the journey here or the unloading and packing away like some broken toy. Only that first morning and that negro nurse with her large eyes and beaming smile and hands big enough to spank your ass, if you caused trouble, you remember smiling, drawing on the cigarette, exhaling the smoke against the windowpane, wondering if your mother’d come and make visit, bring the chocs and smokes and magazines and that book of Ezra Pound’s poems that lay by your bed at home. Alice stands behind you, her breath giving off scent of peppermint, her hand touching your arm. She says nothing; never has since you’ve been here, just touches, pulls, points, and stares. In the girl’s john, she kissed you once, her arms embracing you like some deserted child. What she wants you do not know, but you follow, gazing at her long hair and swaying butt, and the legs naked from dress hem to feet. She points to the cigarette you hold in your hand, gestures smoking, becomes frantic, so you pass her the cigarette and she sucks like it an amateur blowjob, taking in the smoke and hauling it down. Her eyes remain fixed on you; the cigarette is lost to you now; you’ll have to bum another or go without. Alice sucks and sucks; you remember the night she crept in your bed, her lips kissing your cheek, her hands enfolding you close as death, her breath soaked in peppermint, and you just lay there staring at the grey ceiling, smelling the mint, the scent of soap, her fingers invading between your thighs, whispering your name, as just along the locked ward, some lost soul cried. You’re her lover now it seems, a locked in lover with a fractured mind. She takes ECG like it was her holiday; her fried brain cells, you muse, make no difference to how she was or is; like you she’s strapped down, given a shot to knock her out and comes round with a thumping head, wondering if she’d died and was back from the dead. She takes the cigarette to the filter, then flicks with her finger and watches the butt end hit the wall, spraying sparks above a bed. She glances at you with her bloodshot eyes, takes your hand in hers, a little squeeze, a tiny smile, a quick peck kiss, and off you to hell or bliss.1