I am troubled, mentally and physically, by any police violence, but I have a particularly visceral and sleepless response to murder-through-wellness-checks. I feel immediately responsible, not for the death, but the possibility before. As if I am Mad niece or Mad auntie.

As if I could pry open the moment that cusps falling, stand with family, with those who care and know and love, and soothe what frightens. Find the meaning in ricochet of syllables. Hear the longing in visions, the connection in voices I can’t myself hear. Speak in gentle words.

I worked for a decade in the Downtown Eastside; I’ve lived for months with other Mad folks in locked psych wards. I know how to talk someone down. Listening, storying, laughter, water, coffee, cigarette, ice cream, walk, pencil, bracelet, prayer, hand, stack of coloured blocks.

Two directions: one, a link somehow to this physical world you do share. Reminders of the rhythm of meals, or the season, is it afternoon? What are you doing, wearing, in this moment, where are we now? And another: attention to the arc of psychological material that emerges.

Listen to the words unfurl. This odd poem. Mad language doesn’t have to be factual to be true. It is fear and memory; it is dream and hope. It is a human call to another, this staccato syntax that you can grasp, you can repeat. Try it. You can nod. You can play.

I know what shifts me: a sense that I am heard, that others comprehend something of what I am trying to express. Sit with me and breathe. Think of how you would console a child waking from a nightmare. Would you yell? Or remind them of safety, this room, a song, your arms.

There are so many possibilities. Ask us. Interview us—the Mad people you don’t think walk among you. The Mad people who make the news only at the point of our death. We know our lives, our delight in birds, or how trees or lyrics resonate, the strange gifts of our minds.

We know police brutality— terror of their shouts, their sticks, handcuffs, guns. But we have expertise too in what we genuinely need, at our most vulnerable. We could teach you—we have so much to teach you—all about what can reach our Mad kin, how root a brain that soars.