N  a  p a  l  m     H  e  a  l  t  h     S  p  a  :     R  e  p  o  r  t     2  0  0  7

 

 

MELISSA WRAY

 

 

Pink spaghetti straps

 

and blond hair

skimming

sharp shoulder blades

frail arms

and slim wrists

resting small hands

on narrow hips

short dress

barely covering

tight

slightly spread

thighs.

Standing

in front

of a gas station

on the corner

of Wealthy

and Division—

he

was beautiful.

 

 

 

 

Hotel

 

She’s slumped

on the hard bench

squeezing

her red feet

into stockings

tying

a white apron

around her

black-clothed waist

pulling on

thick-soled shoes

and yelling in Vietnamese

back and forth

across the locker room

to other women

in the same ritual—

her last

exhalations

before

dragging

her cleaning cart

through suites.

 

 

 

 

Vernon

 

His socks never matched

he wore a hat

layers of shirts

but carried

his pants,

his flamboyant

boxers

a beacon

as he walked in

the straight through rooms

during the middle

of group meetings.

His second day

I realized

he wore no pants

because they fell off

his emaciated waist.

Belts and strings were not allowed.

He was placed in the QUIET ROOM,

covered it with

feces

and vomit,

the clinicians

unsure

if it was intentional.

His wandering presence

absent

during group that day,

he was

cowering

in the middle of a hallway

being tied

into two hospital gowns,

weeping.

There is something

different

about

a man’s

tears.

 

 

 

 

Nichole

 

She was boyish

with bushy dark hair

and deep-set eyes.

She wore too-big sweats

with laceless workboots.

A patient released last week,

she relapsed

and returned.

She spoke of her addictions readily—

a laundry list

containing every drug

I could fathom.

Turned to prostitution,

kicked out of missions,

sexually abused

by her father

and grandfather

from the age of 4,

they were all she had left.

“I want to be near

the love

of family,”

she asserted.

Here,

they tell us to have

a plan

in place

before we leave.

 

 

 

 

Scars

 

She pulls her sleeves down

over scars.

she has vaguely mentioned

scrubbing the black

off spoon bottoms,

boys that gave it to her

if she gave herself,

shoving supermarket apples

in her pockets

to survive,

or how it starts

with a quarter bag

and escalates

to four.

I look at her—

clean

coltish

bright,

feeding her daughter

at the highchair

from a newly polished spoon.

 

 

 

 

19

 

You look so young

when you smoke cigars

drinking the wine

I buy.

 

I’m always covered

in white feathers

when I leave your bed.