There was a girl in hospital.

 

“I’m a monster,”

she kept saying.

 

“If you’re a monster,

you’re the prettiest monster I’ve ever seen,”

a nurse told her.

 

It didn’t matter that she was

severely underweight

or that she had taken a

(Molotov) cocktail of drugs

and now could hardly remember

her own name.

She had beauty and grace

and a determination to love her family.

 

That nurse was only one of the two

that were kind.

 

The rest had lines on their foreheads

that read:

“I hate my job

and this life

and these children.”

 

Their pursed lips whispered to us

that they didn’t care

if we offed ourselves in the showers.

 

Their biggest concern

wouldn’t be our deaths, but

the avalanche of paperwork

that would ensue with a suicide.

 

They didn’t care about the

transgender boy

they put with us just because

he matched us under his clothes—

and then they tried to tell us

eating-disordered girls that

what hid under our clothes

didn’t matter.

 

They didn’t care when

a new girl

tried to compare scars

with an old girl.

 

They didn’t care/they didn’t care/they didn’t care.

 

But I made it out alive anyway.

I made it out shouting and

thrashing at the walls

because

 

I care/I care/I care.

 

And the young girls and

the young boys

with the shouting and

thrashing illnesses of the mind

need someone

new

to take care of them,

and to teach them

how to tell themselves

they are alive and

breathing and

shouting and

thrashing pieces of fucking art.

 

And I will learn

how to be that

someone

new.