1. James Daniel Ross

His voice like an angel plays games with my head, 

go over the wall, he whispers. 

nobody’s looking or would ever expect a good boy like you to just split 

So I do, in the dark with my heart gearing up, sneak out of the white room in silent white sneakers. Down the sanitized hall, passing open doorways like animal dens, that’s what I’m thinking, all the creatures here caged in their nightmares. 

go jamey go 

To the fire door exit. 

shortest distance between two points

Straight line, here there inside out, across manicured grass and dormant flower beds through thick trimmed hedges hiding the brick wall. Then jumping to grip the concrete ledge so high above and pull myself up, a foot then a knee to the top and fall over. Like a thrill ride almost, my stomach drops out in a floating moment not knowing which way the ground is. Just, it’s too late to turn back.

* * * * *

Ruffling sand out of my hair, my fingers like a comb untangle sleepknots and debris, smoothing it down, hooking it so tidy behind my ears. Like that makes me look all polite and presentable and not like a mental case who’d sleep on a beach, or someone who can’t go home.

But I can’t sleep here either. Heading down the beach instead, wandering south I think along the gray shoreline. Moonlight makes the shadows silver, makes the scattered shafts of driftwood eerie like skeletal limbs jutting out of the sand pointing you out with a finger. So I’m trembling, wanting the warmth of the morning to melt away these midnight chills and wrap me instead in the arms of daylight. My clothes all like dewy and damp from the sleepless beach so I’m walking faster, wishing the sunrise would hurry and finish. Touches of color waking up now to what gets green and what gets blue, the rocky headland, the forested ravine, the cliffs high above me lined with lakefront estates, all exclusive and gated like private kingdoms or country clubs. Or adolescent psychiatric facilities. 

residents only

I’m guessing it’s just been an hour so far, that’s maybe five miles away and the day hardly started. Follow the sidewalk through aging neighborhoods, crack after crack these white canvas Keds like ghost feet light my way. Not stepping on any, not even the natural cracks where the concrete’s buckled from the roots of ancient trees with big sturdy branches they hang tire swings on, well, the dad does. There’s screened porches with wooden steps that need painting and doors that slam in their frames so loud the moms yell from the kitchens not to. They have dogs that dig up the yards and live in the houses with dirt on their paws, even upstairs. And delinquent kids, who you wouldn’t think your kids would hang out with but they do.