CW: institutionalization

I was sitting on my bed at McLean Hospital and I heard a sharp rap at the already open door, you know, for safety. He’s standing there, leaning in the doorframe, wearing his white tank top, blue stone jeans, and classic striped Adidas from Live Aid 1985. He catwalks into the room and picks up an unfinished poem from a pile on the nightstand and reads the title aloud — and then asks so you think you might be a poet, my dear? I nod, unable to take my eyes off of his bicep swelling underneath his pyramid-studded armband and the bulge beneath his thick black belt. I look up, blushing, and he’s staring at me with those dark brown eyes, his black mustache like a perfectly manicured chevron of majesty, when he says you can be anything you want to be, but honey, please don’t be boring. I was familiar with the concept but still so far from living it into being. He brings the poem with him as he begins to take long strides in a lap around the room, reading each line in earnest and picks one to read aloud — do I want to be him or fuck him or both? Smiling, he takes my hand and together we Fosse walk our way in circles around the room. I tell him I don’t want to lose center but am desperate to be free of it. He says to me you love her but if it’s there, darling, it’s there and I just cannot argue with his regal wisdom. He struts back to the nightstand, places the poem back in the stack, remarks your lyrics are just dandy and turns on his heels for the door. I watch his cheeks move side to side and when he gets there, he turns with his fist in the air, his knee slightly bent and says you’ve always been a poet, my dear, and now the rest of the world wants to see. He gives me a wink, and then he’s gone. I pick up the papers his fingers just touched and read through questions I’ve been asking myself for years. But this time, I think I know the answer.