Ringing the Bells

And this is the way they ring the bells in Bedlam and this is the bell-lady who comes each Tuesday morning to give us a music lesson and because the attendants make you go and because we mind by instinct, like bees caught in the wrong hive, we are the circle of crazy ladies who sit in the lounge of the mental house and smile at the smiling woman who passes us each a bell, who points at my hand that holds my bell, E flat, and this is the gray dress next to me who grumbles as if it were special to be old, to be old, and this is the small hunched squirrel girl on the other side of me who picks at the hairs over her lip, who picks at the hairs over her lip all day, and this is how the bells really sound, as untroubled and clean as a workable kitchen, and this is always my bell responding to my hand that responds to the lady who points at me, E flat; and although we are not better for it, they tell you to go. And you do.