Encroacher

The Women in Yellow

I still watch the puddle, just in case and quietly hope that those nice men never come.

All i can do is hope, wait and believe that everything will work itself out if i stay true to all three.

Special words, though not mine. They could only come from an equally special person. And i mean special in the most strangest of sense.

I never knew my own mother so she has to have been the closest thing I've ever had to one.

Towering over me but a dwarf in comparison to everyone around her: she always wore these thick, round glasses and a mouth that was forever smiling.

I can no longer remember what exactly she looked like--whether this is do to time or reasons i'd rather not think of, i'm not sure. But out of everything about her, her words, for sure, are the things that most definitely stuck.

She spoke in riddles,  often and oddly enough. Though, admittedly, undeniably unimaginative and trite--not exactly what you'd call indecipherable--more actually they were like nursery rhymes, after having been run through a washing machine and hung out to dry for far too long.
       Truly no greater the equivalent of sitting a six year-old down with a cookie and a pen and asking them to write a poem. 

All that being said they were special all the same--of the cherishable kind this time--and tailored just for me. 

She's the reason i watch a filthy corner puddle from across the room in my bleached, harsh lit cell from sun up till sun down--or vise versa i wouldn't know. Not out of fear or out of boredom.
     
 But because I want to still have hope. 

Hope that one day I'll walk a free from this place. Far, far away from the blank corridors and nearly barren rooms.

A hope that I'll never have to see through another patient care assistant's pretend smile or watch another patient's mind slowly deteriorate.

A hope that one day the definition for insane will no longer have such a snug space for me within it.

A hope that someday all of this, everything, will just turn out right.

So, i sit here, in my corner, and i hope and i believe, in the words that she taught me on merciless repeat. To the point that I could easily recite them even if I were beaten till near unconsciousness or injected with the high they claim is medicinal in this place.

She'd tell me things like I'm "a smart kid" and that I'm "most certainly sane". That "the world outside of here will be worth all of this pain".

The puddle is like my way of holding on to that faith. Because if you were crazy enough to listen to any one thing she had to say there'd be no sense in denying just about everything else.

And like she said herself: "The ability to find wonder in what others see as drab, makes you extraordinary, not mad."

I. am. sane.