In the Psychiatric Emergency Room

Polaroid from the emergency roomYou make up reasons for skipping pills. You must lie because the robins are watching, rolling both paranoid eyeballs, their jaundiced bellies bulging like your yet-to-be-named son when he died in your arms. Waking up from a loop of sleepless nights, you see the dusty crib melting into a distorted dance, a vivid voice, an irresistible sign. You run, oily hair flapping, like a forest fire.

You won’t confess that your naked belly is another psychiatric room with no windows but echoing walls and chairs nailed to the floor. Compulsively, you listen, and hear children giggling out of your ears.

 

 

 

Yu Li is a medical student and will soon begin her residency in Pediatrics. She writes anxiously and passionately in both Chinese and English.

Photo Credit: Cat

3 Responses to “In the Psychiatric Emergency Room”

  1. That Hurt says:

    wow

  2. J. Alexander says:

    That second paragraph change is excellent; powerful is an understatement.

  3. Daniel Beaudoin says:

    Oh gosh.This knocked the wind out of me.

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