Contact

She shuffles by lost
in the fog of mental illness,
mute, unreachable.
I make nursing rounds,
hum some old tune. She
turns, follows me, hums
the same song.
Across her chasm
of neural chaos,
contact.


The prompt from Fireblossom over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads was to write about calamities and from my 36 years as a psychiatric nurse, there is no calamity that touches my heart more than major mental illness. This is a true story of a client with schizophrenia in a state hospital in California who had been mute for years. I was humming a song my father used to sing and she hummed along. So I started singing the songs I remembered from him and she sang along. She had a beautiful voice. Eventually we learned she was a singer with Benny Goodman in the mid 30's. She loved to sing. I offer it on dVerse poets open link night as well.