Ratcheting up the stakes, yet every day is the same numb
as we sit and boil like frogs inside our own separate skulls. 
You, atheist, will go to church in that nice floral cotton dress.
I’ll wait at home unblinking until my eyes burn. You’ll pretend
you’re not looking for hope somewhere, anywhere. You’ll lie 
when I ask you if it’s because you witness my hopelessness,
and that scares you more than this sickness itself. Lately,
there’s nothing I can control. Everything is swept under
the tide of passing time, so indistinguishable, so turbulent.
You drink some nights, and I read my own horrific records.
They hang around like dead weight. You told me to let it go 
because you thought murder would be my next choice
of retribution. By retribution I meant graphic, honest letters, 
and formal complaints of malpractice. Something to document
the consequence of bad systems. But no ink on page is enough
to communicate the depravity. Nothing could ever be so violent,
so grotesque as watching a mother watch her daughter 
disintegrate like paper in rain. Hearing her daughter say
I don’t think I have a soul anymore after all this botched ‘healing’.
What about the soul you loved? What about your baby girl,
now the same weight all grown up, so very tired, so faithless?
I see you hurt when I hurt. I see you garden and clean and shop
and try to live when I cannot. We are both treading this wreck.