Just as the world was once flat

And less infinite than its truth

Your decisions were once measured

As though to the millimetre

But when they told you that you had no choice

But admission

You tried to draw without the guidance of a rule

And your emaciated hands

Could not hold the line straight

So your thoughts were like

The loosening spindle of a persistent drill;

Damaging more than functional

You refused what was unconditional

And so they chained your wrists together

With one bone-clinching cuff

And taped a sign which read

Sectioned under the Mental Health Act

Over your lips

And perhaps you were temporarily satisfied with that

Because you'd never enjoyed

The distance you could force them apart

And so to have a label pull them near

Was a little pedestal

Recognition of how excellently ill you'd made yourself

For you it was a reward

For me it was al little note in a maths lesson

About basic surds

Which read

You will be picked up from school by your grandfather today

And my label leached off me

The way yours leeched off you

It was a disfigurement in the way

That it ballanced on my reflection

With hideous semi-presence

And the smart kid with the bad breath

Never asked why I let my fingers

Snow storm through that note

Reducing it to desicated coconut on the desk

But I knew what it meant

It meant that you were no longer trusted

As you

But had morphed into

A mistake

And I looked down at the numbers

That were square-rooting themselves

And wondered why everything

Maths included

Was trying to grow backwards