I live in two zones
In one I see the damage that mental illness wreaks
In the other I see through
to the person beneath
I see Tiffany breathless from playing volleyball
I see her napping peacefully in the sand
I see her entirely free of the harshly colored overlays
of chronic schizophrenia
as if they have been pulled away
like layers of smelly bedclothes
I see her unsnapped
from the grid
of our diagnostic categories
Author Bio:
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and. was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and as a print edition. To read more of his work, Google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.
(This piece was submitted during Newmag's open submission window).
Photo by Sérgio Rola on Unsplash