Waiting/Relapse #Poem by Abigail George

“Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.” - Jack Kerouac

“Today I can’t stand myself, and I will force myself to write because you’re unhappy. So, I must mask the monster within and find the landing place. I must smile because I want to see you smile. I must count the days and remain quiet in your presence, because you are not at peace. This is what I tell my mind on bad days.” - Abigail George

I took a walk and found a poem.
It gave me good advice.
It told me to be kind to myself.
It told me to do the dishes,
to go for long walks.
That fresh air is good for me.
It told me to listen to my mother.
It told me to forgive my father.
That to fix my broken brain,
I had to love myself.

I live in the past.
I live inside this year of sadness.
You, the man, are no longer here.
I tell myself that I’m free.
I have no mother.
I have no father.
I am not a daughter anymore.
I have no sister.
I have no brother.
These days I keep to myself.
Birds inside my head.

Birds kept inside mental cages.
The cold sea is a great comfort.
Some nights this pain is endless.
Tonight, the garden is psychotic.
I have been put in isolation.
The door is locked from the outside.
I receive no visitors.
There are bars at the window.
Charles Bukowski’s ghost sits beside me.
He strokes my hair.

He makes me feel beautiful.
I took a sip of his beer.
It makes me feel warm inside, good.
I hear the women’s laughter.
They start throwing stones at me.
Even this pain is medicine.
Although it makes me feel mediocre.
Strong medicine like Chopin.
I finished the bottle.
I hid the green bottle away
under the sheets that felt like winter
I jumped out of the window.

The slow torture of night catches me.
Mrs Williams, the dead pastor’s wife,
told me to stop complaining. You’re alive
for a purpose: to dream, to have a child.
Live, she said. Find reasons to live.
I read a poem by Kobus Moolman.
I write to the Dutch English poet
Joop Bersee. Nothing makes the
darkness go away. My brother
locks me out of the house.
But first, his fist rains down on me.
I disappeared somewhere.

Once Rilke’s wife, always Rilke’s wife.
The cloud hurts.
The sun hurts.
The snail laughs at me.
You couldn’t even land a man, it says.
How to be great, I ask?
Be kind, Oprah says.
So, I am kind.
The world forgets all about me.
Just like my mother did.

On my birthday there was no cake
or presents. There were no red balloons.
I ate beans and rice in the kitchen
with my father. The stigma is refreshing.
The bones of madness is a gem, trivia.
I went on holiday to Provincial Hospital.
This trip taught me to understand others.
It taught me to understand myself more.
Nowadays when depressed I give myself flowers.
I keep my pain to myself.