Psycho’s Soliloquy
by N. K. Mandal

So here’s the deal I’ve been in a Brechtian mood no showers for a week and eating plebeian food and all these SSRIs have made me so numb I can’t feel a thing anymore no I can’t even have a fling anymore because I’ve lost my libido to these goddamn pills but he said in that air-conditioned yellow room I go to every week At least you can get up from the bed each day get dressed up and fed each day and remember the time that you bled each day See see you’re getting better it’s hard to realize because it’s slow but you’re getting better No no I’m not getting better yes I can act like a starry dynamo in this machinery but in some ways I’m worse because when people see fresh blood on your hands they go Damn that’s some real shit but all I can do now is hyperventilate on a lawn and look up at the sky and try to wait to feel something so you know what I have to do now Take a few more Ativans than what’s written on the paper like twenty pills and then I can feel something I can feel something good but that night when I went out in that state I collapsed Listen I felt horrible when I woke up in the hospital with that nurse inserting a pipe in my nose I felt horrible for my friends because I never wanted them to see me do this kind of stupid shit To witness the limits of human body like what ways can it be fragmented and what ways can it be hypnotised I really didn’t and a medico-legal case later They locked me up in a hospital cell and there’s only one window which looks out to an apartment I see this old lady come out every day into her balcony and crochet in the open sun I see a ball turning into a small sweater maybe it’s for her granddaughter I hope she likes it I hope she receives that love I never did so she can turn out to be anything other than the monster I am but sometimes I wonder if we can do away with all this nonsense The Police The Psychiatrists The Deans and one day when I was staring at the white walls of that room I got to thinking What if we could get in formation and get some information What if we could stop for a moment and realize what we’re really up against Would we be better people Would we make better people and Would as Hikmet Ran dreamt if we fight today then would the children of this world may live and grow and laugh and play Is that world really possible Yes I guess Yes I think Yes it is.

N. K. Mandal (they/he) is a nonbinary student residing in India. They are pursuing formal education in a STEM field, and write as an amateur. They try to explore queerness, mental health, social stratifications, and complexities of the postmodern life in their writing.

Photo by Alex Green.