Ann Lewis
Sitting in the paisley armchair Ann Lewis
at the small town bank,
you wouldn’t budge.
I’m waiting for Bill Clinton.
He’s taking me to Hawaii.
We’re gonna be married.
Loan officers swarm around you,
bump into your sharded reality
with talk of what you used to be—
Sunday pearls, beauty shop hair,
someone’s wife, someone’s mother.
The men in blue rang your wrists, metal rings
one by one. It took three of them to take you.
Men in white coats, you in polyester slippers,
pills ravish your cortex and bring you back.
It takes two weeks. You come home.
At what used to be a family table, you sit alone.
Ann Lewis
Ann Lewis is the author of Inside Out: Meet Mama Schizophrenia, a debut poetic memoir of loving and living with a parent diagnosed with schizophrenia. A world traveler, she lived in South Africa and Argentina and now lives on the Gulf Coast where she teaches literature and lives with her water-loving cat, Tigger, and her bouncing yoga pup, Ellie. A native Floridian, she catches sunsets at night and trusts the world is bigger than it looks. Read more at annlewiswriter.com.