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PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH TRUST
POETRY COMPETITION 2009 WINNING POEMS
Night
Shift on the Dementia Floor
Tonight I work the night
shift
the graveyard shift.
Except, when you die at
three fifty two,
there is no grave marker
above your bed.
Grey-darker, your skin
fades;
there is no yard to lay you
to rest, just yet.
Outside, only estate houses
run by the council;
white flat-board walls and
paper doors
the road beside them.
The night-wind blows hard
tonight;
I hear the whistle through
hollow caverns
paper doors, paper chest.
I lift thin cotton night
dress, thermal vest,
to feel your skin rise and
fall,
rise and fall
and then nothing.
There is no movement
nothing at all.
I feel every bone in your
hand like bird-bones, so small.
The shadow of our hands
entwined against the wall,
as if theyre flying up
past the brickwork,
taking your mind higher
than it could ever go here.
I look down at you on the
bed;
your navel staring up at
me, a hollow eye
a tunnel connecting you
directly back to your birth,
to a time when your mind
was soft.
Unprotected by unformed
bones, joins not yet filled
but looked after by people
who loved you.
People with strong wills
and intentions to keep you safe,
whilst you grew harder
formed skeletal scaffolds
around your mind.
And then came the time,
those bones broke in your mind.
Or perhaps, it became too
strong;
the spirit behind the bones
began to unwind.
Too good for its cage, too
powerful for those things,
it got stronger than bone,
caught fire, grew wings.
And staring into your third
hollow eye,
I watch your mind break
free, with wings against the walls,
out across the sky-scape,
rise and fall
casting great shadows and
shapes,
blanketing the whole world
in cumulus drapes.
By Molly Case
First Prize Winner,
Psychiatry Research Trust (Excel for Charity) Poetry
Competition 2009
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