Take Away

I've seen faces

caked with addiction

laced with too

many prescriptions

they say

"what doesn't kill you"

but all I saw was

broken homes and fried

temporal lobes

one woman's tears

were so violent

she shook with them

her face red and swollen

she had had

electric shock treatment

and another woman

had too, her anxiety

consuming the stagnant

air of the treatment center

like a match lit

in a room full of gaseous fumes

it's never easy

these solutions to

our mental health problems

we need more time

to overcome them

sometimes sitting in chairs

next to veterans

wives and daughters

addicts and depressives

the collateral victims

telling our truth

shouting while saying nothing

the words we hold back

are often the ones

that come out anyway

in bodily harm

or at the bottom

of a bottle of scotch

we need more time

to process

our trauma

and make a new way

decisions that

add instead of

taking away