Cracks
(by April Trice)
I feel comfortable here.
This place.
Maybe not comfortable.
But definitely not scared.
My Grandma is here.
She drinks too much.
Tries to hurt her self.
It’s safe for her here.
The state of Ohio says so.
I don’t see patients shuffling.
Blank.
Lost.
I don’t smell their rank unbathed bodies.
The stale urine.
Baby powder.
I see through the cracks.
I am only a child.
But I see them.
What they could have been.
What they want to be.
What they’ll never be.
I can almost hear
Their silent screams.
Spot on there to be honest. I visited my nan a few years ago in one of these homes, it was horrible.
Reminds me a little of Simon Armitage’s ‘November’. Yours is a very interesting, but chilling poem nonetheless.