No Safe Place
By Sarah Ponder

Because there was nowhere else I could possibly run to,
I gave myself up to their plan,
allowed myself to be put into my own hearse,
my mother the depressed driver,
had nothing to say except,
"you know, you're dying."
Clutching the pills that got me there,
I was going to the place that haunted my childhood dreams,
where they used to take me for years of therapy,
except this time it would be me
behind those large iron doors.
I clutched my box of pills like a child clings to a favorite toy,
it was my safety net.
I looked out towards the trees,
knowing it would be the last time I saw something other than white walls
for awhile.
Today a nurse scrutinizes every inch of me,
she tells me i'm a lost cause,
but i'm, i'm not lost,
I just don't know how I got here.
Today I am very impatient,
I don't like playing these games,
I don't like the way they think they know everything,
and how every word i say is like writing my own psychological will.
everyone has left me in this room,
my mom didn't say goodbye,
even the nurse has left,
I don't think she could stand to see me cry.
I hear an intercom paging my doctor,
saying "new patient arrival, deliver to adolescent psych ward."
I was all signed in,
a part of their game.
A game i'd have to learn how to play,
if I wanted to survive,
or make it out with my own mind.
In this place it's just as i expected,
the suicide case,
the anorexic girl with her cigarettes and laxatives,
the girl who played with a lighter a little too much,
the sad gospel singer who tried to hang herself one too many times,
the enraged girl who played with knives,
the schizo with her imaginary world,
the OCD freak with an obsession with time,
and me, the one who let drugs control her mind.
Meanwhile, my mother was signing the papers
to leave me in this place
for how long I wasn't sure,
but what i did know was to trust no one,
there is no safe place.