Cold room, warm hearts.
Waiting to see the doctors.
All the same, just different pain.
Twenty-six is seeing his old girlfriend who passed away when they were just teenagers.
Twenty-nine is thinking of drugs more than his one month old baby.
Who’s weaker?
Twenty-eight
for twenty-eight…is lost.
Twenty-eight.
That’s all she was.
Five foot eight and two hundred pounds.
Twenty-eight.
That’s all she was.
Wouldn’t speak but was far too loud.
Lost.
Not even a GPS could help her.
Scared.
No one can save her.
Constantly pushing through this forest of flowers.
Feeling enclosed by beautiful beings.
A weed lost amongst all else.
Blending in.
Getting lost…
She asks for help by pushing people away.
Don’t come near her, or she will have to live another day.
She’ll push through the burdens, and stay strong for you.
Bed number twenty-eight, will no longer be in use.
Her story is not over yet, nor has it really begun.
She has no pen in hand, a pencil is all she has ever known.
Carving lines and then trying to erase.
But just like during math class, it doesn’t all always go away.
Because she can only erase so many times until the page just rips.
She can’t start from scratch, she’s got the world at her finger tips.
For her hands are too heavy and her eyes are too full.
She’s seen far too much, she’s twenty-two years OLD.
Bed number twenty-eight
says she feels all the wrong things.
She can’t feel love but she can feel the blade as it stings.
Bed number twenty-eight says she simply can’t breathe.
Her heart and lungs are fine: we watched them take an EKG.
I walk over to bed number twenty-eight, and I look at her dead in the eyes.
I see my reflection, I see where her problem lies.
She’s wondering where she recognizes me; she can’t seem to place.
She is so blindsided right now, I seemed to not have left a trace.
Bed number twenty-eight cannot recall who I am, because she has been consumed.
By a couple of numbers in an old white room.
I strain her eyes with mine, praying she’ll recall
all of the good time’s we’ve had, even if they were small.
Slowly she starts to regain herself,
life fills in her lungs.
And it has nothing to do with the graham crackers the Nurse gave her, or the Doctors or the drugs.
The girl from bed number twenty-eight needed to go home.
She needed help.
And now that she’s gotten it, no more problems will she dwell.
She’s got a lot of issues, far more than me.
She’s got a pretty terrible life, but with my eyes you couldn’t see.
The girl from bed number twenty-eight just needed a little care.
She gets very lost sometimes
when I am not there.
I looked at the girl from bed number twenty-eight and all I saw were scars.
Tattooed up and down her body, but in her eyes were more.
She was sad and lonely, scared of nothing more than herself.
No one had the power over her; not even the girl she could not tell.
I am the girl from bed number twenty-eight.
I am her indeed.
I am also the girl that served you dinner last night, as I waitress on Saturdays.
But on Fridays I break down, well at least that’s what she told me.
The girl in bed number twenty-eight was too sad for her own good.
She’ll die holding someone’s hand, yet lonely.
I left that girl at the hospital.
I left her in her bed.
She was comfortable and at ease; I want her to get some rest.
Part of me is healing, while part of me can’t stop.
Part of me is climbing uphill while part of me just jumped.
I am at constant battle with myself:
with bed number twenty-eight.
That’s all she is, is a sad story.
That is NOT who I am today.
I am NOT bed number twenty-eight.
I am not her, at all.
For I get up after crashing down, while she allows herself to fall.
I seek bandaids, not more blades,
I seek kindness and better days.
Bed number twenty-eight is an old friend, indubitably.
But I am not her today
I am stronger than her,
yes
indeed.
