My favorite moment in the psych ward
was when the girl who looked like me,
who, I think, was Dominican, maybe,
turned to me, and we laughed in sync:
our psychotic laugh. At a certain point,
you begin to feel as though you belong
in the locked tower of the uptown hospital,
in the rooms with no glass, sharp corners,
no lone circumference to which I could
tie a bedsheet. I have often found it
a difficult pursuit, to be deemed human
enough to be let out onto Amsterdam Avenue
in the morning light, to face the senseless world
without numbing agent, separate out the delusions
which are your own, from the collected ones.
Tomorrow is supposed to be the day I am human
again. I will be released, set free, gone.