Water resistant
to a depth of 1000 tears

insane
clinical fact
not word
you and the white coated girl said
on my birthday
when you gave me the watch
that marked my madhouse minutes

surgical silver surrounded
a nervous wrist tick
covering cuts, not wounds
my mental giblets bulging
at each twenty five hour
tock throb of a locked ward day
punctuated only
by the medicine cart
and its punctual pill push

escape came, long wrists later
to another place, with an unlocked door
but no way out

I took your timepiece
and hung it from the ceiling
thinking maybe it was time I joined it

but never did

ripping it triumphantly from the artex
on my final day there
dried out and free, I clocked out
without you
and went to Paris
where, hunched on a bridge
round the back of Notre Dame
I launched your watch
into the river

dark droplets pitched back
as ripples pulsed
along a dying wave

below the surface
a stopped face dulls
and second hand
tremors tremble unseen
deeply
in Seine