Imagine your is child having a nightmare.
Imagine that nightmare has become her waking world.
All of your hugs,
All of your kisses, and words of comfort,
All of them together are not as big
as the nightmare holding her captive.
That is the world my sister is trapped in.
Hospitalized by her own request before she lost the will to fight the
voices urging her to violence.
My sister lying on the floor saying, ''I am good"
"I'm not going to hurt you, call the rescue mommy"
Lost for the while in her madness
her sweetness still comes through.
The hospital staff see, and look out for her.
It had been so long we had forgotten what schizophrenia means.
Nellie and I sit an the corner of my room and make button flowers.
Set to the task by a friend's request
they are a wall of pretty in the fortress we need
to get through the worry and sadness.
A sparkling brightness that brings me back
to days of playing with my grandmother's
button tin and feeling it was treasure.
Nellie and I lost in the rather mundane task of looping wire through
button holes and twisting it into a stem
over and over.
Like saying a rosary
or meditating.
Something pretty grows out of the task.
A bit of cheer in the corner catching the light.
I held my sister tonight and sang Christmas songs
in my off key fashion.
Left her in the hands of the hospital staff and
gave her a kiss goodnight.
Then I headed home to my corner of pretty things.
My little one sleeping on my bed behind me.
My girl fixing me a cup of tea,
and me, twisting wire and worry
into hope.
And Love,
And Peace.
