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All depends, all depends on the skin all depends on the skin you're living in
—S. Sundiata
All along, ever since I last saw him being wheeled away, strapped onto a stretcher pushed by an expressionless medic, smiling a terrified and embarrassed smile before he was lifted into the ambulance and then was gone, on his way to a residential facility upstate, as so many before him and since, a transfer that I, as the evaluating psychologist, had recommended, all along I felt that at least I had his poems, or better, his songs. I had tucked them away, along with notes and drawings from other clients I had worked with in that psychiatric facility, never reading them again, but being convinced that one day I would, when I tried to tell his story. They were proof of our journey together, the tangible reminders of his presence in my journey as a psychologist. As I started looking for his poems for this paper and could not find them, I began thinking that I had lost them, and I could not understand how. It was with a mixture of relief and astonishment that I realized, as I was struggling to put together the first draft of this paper, I never had his poems, he took them with him, and I only had the vivid experience and memory of our exchanges. In a sense, I still have his poems.
His name was Chris—his real name. Using a pseudonym for a youngster who, like the thousands of youngsters that pass through the doors of psychiatric institutes every year and are quickly forgotten once they are transferred to other facilities, not only feels unnecessary, it also feels like