Green Socks Buried In Leather

Lisa Gordon Photography

Where are those two little girls?

I saw them yesterday with their milk pail.

I wanted to tell them goodbye, but the words

were tar papered to my tongue.

Today knife verbs are cutting me

with questions while glass bottles

demand I take another pill.

I should be wearing my new pink dress,

but it isn’t in that enamel mouthed drawer

gaping at me from beside my bed.

I can hear you!!

Damn it!!

I can hear you!!

You are telling my husband he

should have given more thought

as to his choices when

packing my suitcase for insanity.

You say I don’t need

clothing for lightening,

but I am afraid of storms.

The last one broke my back.

My mama told me it wasn’t nice

to dance naked on a metal roof.

The sun must be going down.

The zoo bar pattern on the wall

is crawling into the corners.

I hate night.

The shadows speak too loud

and I can’t see my green socks

buried in leather straps.

©Susie Clevenger 2014

At Real Toads Margaret Bednar offered the moving photos of Willard Asylum taken by Lisa Gordon as inspiration for our creativity. As I began to write, I thought back to when I was a child growing up in rural Missouri. Our neighbor, Mrs. Wright, suffered from mental illness. When she was healthy she would chat with my youngest sister and I, take us out to see the chickens and give us home baked cookies almost every time we came to get a gallon of milk. Then depression would leave her catatonic and she would be taken to a mental hospital and given electric shock therapy. It was so unnerving to see that sweet woman sitting silent and vacant eyed in the kitchen after such episodes.

Artistic Interpretation With Margaret ~ Willard Asylum