Containment and the touch

This poem was inspired by the idea that love in itself is an obsession and a craze. I created a mental hospital which represented the containment of the person in a relationship that is more in love with the other than the other with them.  And no matter how much space is between them, she could still feel him as a part of her.

Containment and the touch 
by Katherine Racine


The room was plain, white; walls chipping with years of neglected paint
Assigned to the door hung 813 in block numbers
It was empty; it had been for cycles now
Each hour passing brought the ideals of the mislead
There was a fear there, no one denied it.
No one dared to.

The cubical closet had cold floors; speckled with gray and asphalt
History scrapped at the linoleum in large streaks
Its calming chaos swept over the 18X12 cage
It was empty; it had been for cycles now
A meandering voice echoed
It reverberated off the broken walls
Its silence was palpable.

The physical containment wasn’t any measure to its realm
It wasn’t anything to its ache
The nurse was two doors down now, calling out
“2 am, lights out, lights out”
She need not come to that room
There was never an inclination of illumination
The bulbs had all gone dull.

But she checked none the less
She had every assigned round

The lobby was less a beckon of comfort and more a token of freedom
Yearning arms stretched out for the organic rather
Than the flickering of far off human creation
The lobby was empty; it had been for cycles now
Remains of cut grass paroled the spinney carpet
Where skin cells of feet stuck permanently
Its fibers told a thousand tales.

There wasn’t much in that room, mistakes had made sure of that
Most of the time it was empty, it had been for cycles now
Most of the time they clutched at an essence that was not deemed real
A figment
An imaginative delusion
She on the inside, he on the out
Even with 2 inches of plexy between
She could feel him touching her
And it melted her skin and froze her heart