Mental
When I try to remember his name now, all these years later, I have trouble. Stephen … that much I know. I think about him occasionally, when I feel melancholy and misunderstood or when the air turns crisp and leaves start to spin down to the earth. What was his last name? Robert? George? A double first name, I think, but this recollection could be a casualty of time. Most of my memories from that October are fuzzy.
Some are still sharp and clear, unrelentingly so, like the long, empty stare from Alma’s eyes after her shock treatments. And the lopsided grins of the paper pumpkins the nurses hung on the walls of the common room, to remind us that fall was still falling outside. The world was still out there, somewhere, spinning, buzzing, getting on with life. For us, the world was only the shabby existence we found within these walls; still, stagnant, and much too quiet.