“The OCD Center at Cedar Ridge”

A poem by Gregory Sherl

There are over 6 million people in the U.S. who suffer from OCD.I know a few of them. Helen touches a handful of tissues& then smokes a cigarette. The tissues were clean until theyweren’t. She thinks her apartment is haunted, dirty &contaminated with it doesn’t matter, so her father runs the tissuesalong her apartment’s doorknobs & countertops & the washer & dryer& then mails them to her. Helen stares at the tissues, balledin an assembly line. She’s close to flooding, she’s gota 72% chance of a panic attack, but there’s a cigarette in her mouth& I know she’ll make it to tomorrow even if she doesn’t.

Even in the summer her hands bleed, but we can’t worryabout that right now because today is a day of floors. Tomorrowwill be another day of floors. Across the house, Amber isn’t worriedabout the floors—she’s floating over them, in & outof bathrooms, emptying the trash & pretending to forget howto wash her hands after. Amber isn’t worried about the floors,but I am—the soles of dirt, an unplugged vacuum, how everythingreminds me of smoke. Today the rivers are angry, they’re sickof being frozen. I wish the rivers weren’t so angry. Don’t they knowthat holy water is why we’re always finding God in a rusty shower?

But today I’m tired of floors & rivers, today I feel dirty from being alive.I could scream something large, I could wake the birds.At Cedar Ridge we’re triggered by sight, smell, thinkingabout touch & what comes with it. Siri sees Godin everything & that scares her the most whenshe doesn’t have a drink in her hand. The last time she had a drinkshe was driving home from the police station. It’s easy to guesswhat happened before that, but it’s worth a footnoteanyway: her car halfway on the curb, her passed out in the backseat.

It took 3 minutes to figure out how to unlock the door.Now she’s sober & picking her scalp. She stops picking her scalplong enough to look at the fingernails that picked her scalp beforepicking her scalp again. In the solarium, Kelly sits acrossfrom Siri. Kelly is kind to animals. She believes in amusement parks,& we both agree that everything should taste like elephant ears.

She believes that every empty bottle has a soul, so she lines themalong the floor of her basement. She keeps boxes in bigger boxes,she couldn’t find her bed for days. There’s a TV show about hereven though she’s never met the show. She watchesit on her Kindle & tries to keep her palms dry.Goddamn everything that happens in the world. I’m sad.

I’m not sad. Then I’m sad again. Prescription pills causemore prescription pills, & eventually we grow like treesin winter. I’m still building a tree house. I haven’t started yet,but I’m still  building it. See, that’s the funny thingabout hearts—they’re hearts, & when the M.D. stretchesme out on the examination table I feel like I’m practicingfor a stint at a mausoleum. I stare out the windowbut there’s nothing to stare at.After, I feel too dirty to claim my own skin.

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