The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

“Grief. The moment when you realize that your world and the world are entirely separate. When your world has come to a grinding halt, when you’re drowning and flailing about, and the world just rolls on without you.”

“Yes, we should feel free to critique the Poppy Fields, like all institutions,” the commenter wrote. “But they’ve received *hundreds of thousands* of applicants. Shouldn’t we be more distressed by the fact that so many of our fellow humans are living in such deep despair? Think of how severely they must be hurting. Think of how badly we must be failing them. Maybe if we found a way to connect with each other more, to give each other a little more compassion and grace, to ask people what they need from us instead of always making assumptions, then maybe no one would feel the need to sleep there anymore. Maybe the Poppy Fields would simply run out of patients.”