It fascinates the wrong people though—psychiatrists.
They measure it,
diagnose it,
press it between two sheets of DSM paper
like a wildflower they never really saw.
They ask questions like trapdoors,
and listen like wardens with clipboards.
But my mind is not an inmate.
It’s a cathedral struck by lightning,
still ringing.
They call it delusion,
when I call it revelation.
They fear the colours I see in sound,
the scent of memory dancing in rooms
they’d rather keep locked.
Gosh, it’s a funny place—
a vapour cloud forming, informing,
gathering its thoughts,
willing thoughts to action
in the constant stream.
Consciousness—
thinking of the next word,
or chasing the next thing
sparking across its circuits.
Rolling in the presence
of the present moment,
it feels almost like a free spirit—
or maybe a stuck one.
But the mind is stuck with the body,
and the body stuck with it.
They’ve travelled together
through this earthly space,
registering the existence of each other
as they go.
I take my pauses and breaks
from the traffic that comes too and fro,
maybe I throw myself into my breakfast,
chewing on every bit,
savoring the momentary awareness,
the prolific outpouring of words
that crowd the space between thoughts.
I lift my head to breathe,
resetting brain and body,
returning to the present.
Momentary things I hear—
small echoes in a crowd of others.
I, and they, unique,
intersecting for just a breath,
before we all continue
on the path only we know.
A world denied appraisal
from the psychiatrist’s chair,
a pen and paper, tick-boxing symptoms,
weighed down by cold ink.
No room for the soul,
no space for the unseen,
the things that don’t fit
into the neat lines they draw.
Devoid of soul empathy,
they scribble their judgments,
their analysis sharp but shallow,
missing the heartbeat beneath the words,
the story untold in the spaces between.
And that is my momentary dash—
in the stillness and comfort of a day off,
a moment of reflection,
solitude found not in their urgencies,
their silver bullets—
pills, the antipsychotics,
their antidepressants,
society’s chill.
In these small spaces,
I am free to breathe,
free from the tick-box diagnosis
and the prescriptions that come
with their promises of control.
This, too, is healing—
the quiet,
the stillness,
the untold thoughts that roam
when no one is watching.
—
Feel free to share with your friends
Derry Mescal 2025