poem: september mental illness

is it fall? —
outside the madhouse windows?
i have not showered
in three days, but i would like
to let the air cut me,
the trees loose — danse —
the new and old rising
together: foreign dramas
in dead worlds, patching
gardens, spirits in old
books, old spells —
the split apple on my lip,
wet like sex,
dark and strange like innocence.
i would like —
to wash myself apart
and drown in the gloaming;
no longer a mad girl
but some better phantom
of the pasts of myself.