Poetry in Motion

Ballroom Wallpaper

I was 5 years old the first time I saw him. We were sitting in a room surrounded by my parents old school friends, I can still remember the smell of cigar smoke that filled the room. He was sitting in a chair alone in the corner, my father had been the only one to speak to him that night. I watched as he stared transfixed at our patterned wall paper, his fingers tapping to a rhythm no one else could hear. and as I drew near, he looked at me and asked if I could see the patterns dancing with each other on the walls, and as he described what they looked like I started to see what he saw. The green and blue swirling round and round with each other. It was beautiful. 

The next time we met I was seven, my parents had invited him over for dinner and for some reason the mood seemed tense. I asked him why he had to take so many pills, he said it was so he didn't have to see the dancing wall paper, I couldn't understand why he would ever want to stop.

I am 9 and my father is sitting on a park bench talking to him, I was told to sit in the car but I can hear them talking clearly. He tells my father that the crows, the crows with the red eyes are here and they want to take him to take him away. He has the look of pure terror on his face, and suddenly I start to realize that those dancing patterns might not be so beautiful after all.

I am 11 and he is dragging me down our drive way by my arm. He told me that the water in the stream by our house was trying to strangle me, I looked into his eyes and for the first time I saw the look of a caged animal, the look only a man who honestly and truly feared for his life would wear. His eyes were so dark it was hard to see where his iris stopped and his ball began. No matter what anyone said, no matter how many times people told him he was seeing things, that didn't change the fact that he still saw crows. That didn't change the fact that all he wanted was to protect that little 11 year old girl who saw the dancing wallpaper.

when I was 5 years old I couldn't pronounce schizophrenia, but someone had once described it to me as being locked in a cage in your own mind. I thought that this cage would probably be beautiful but also terrifying.  However I have come to see that, its not the schizophrenic who is locked in the cage, no it is the schizophrenic who is on the out side begging to get in. They are the ones clawing at the cages that hold the rest of us in, they are the ones who hear music in the quiet, the ones who see too many layers of reality. The ones who live by the ocean because the vast expanse of something right and constant is comforting.

when I was 5 years old i couldn't pronounce schizophrenia

I still cant.