The Discharge Planner’s Very Bad Day

OK you may have rights but I have
Rules.

Don’t fix
exhausted eyes on me, you
ancient pleading dog.

OK, we dragged you by the scruff,
we counted all your lagging steps
to prove you strong enough
to get out of here—

you don’t have to go home,
but you can’t stay here.
Here’s a list: pick one, go there—
where’s not our business.

But hey, old dog
We petted you: Good boy! Good job!
Why won’t you roll over
like the rest who know
their place and
disappear?

You don’t get to shame me with your
Need

I can’t even with you
I need a minute

The Way Some Children Die

They brought him in a little cap, soft blue of course much like his father’s eyes
as I remember them or maybe not—his father’s might have been soft gray but never mind—
for here was someone of my own they couldn’t take from me, and as I watched his lips
so like a doll’s but nursing at the air, still sleeping but so hungry, I knew someday he would be
something

and all of them would have to choke down words about my ruined life
all pointing, shouting, all those noses jamming down into my face at once
like pecking hens

but still I didn’t cry when later he would wail and wouldn’t stop
until we both would drop exhausted into fitful sleep
and later when he threw his bottle on the floor and wouldn’t eat his food
and later when his dreams turned into screams and when I tried to hold him
how he kicked and howled and nothing stopped him, even kisses or a slap
or my remorse

and later when he hit three children in one week at school and teachers said
they couldn’t manage him and that I must do something or he couldn’t stay
and maybe if I used some discipline or understanding which meant it was my fault
again

and still my fault when, later now by many years, he disappeared for days into his room
then for a week would vanish off to god-knew-where and then return
to stab me with eyes fired with blame, good god, again,
my fault.

When at the last when he’d set his final secret blaze and the cat died suddenly
and all the helpers didn’t help, but said instead
call back next week—he doesn’t meet our standards—why don’t you try another place?
Until there was no other place

except that place I went at last and lied to him that we might find his father there
and left him waiting where it said Emergency. He was like me, he didn’t cry.
He sat still, blue eyes looking down until they came and took him down a hall
and through a door that opened on his way
to nothing.

Joan Doran is a former psychotherapist and family service agency executive whose book of poetry is Herding Mice at Three A.M. Her poetry has appeared in The Poet’s Touchstone and many other publications. She is a member of the John Hay Poetry Society, the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, and is founding chair of the Literary Arts Guild of the Center for the Arts, Lake Sunapee Region. The current poems are informed by personal experience with family members interfacing with the mental health labyrinth, as well as by the failure of health care systems to regard individuals as human beings.