a poem for today April 22, 2008

I sat on the couch and said

I normally consider myself to be emotionally stable

You said you believed the same

but my face kept drooping into the pile of tissues

and the pillow, I laid it in your lap

Was I trying to make you my mother?

Three times this week into the phone

I said I was OK

 

You called and asked Should I come over?

Was that a trick? You said no. But you were ready

to leave after I shushed you

 

The meds have my hands shaking, my head

Loopy after daylight awake for hours

The bottle said take half a pill nightly

I took a whole one the second time

and could barely hold the broom

The hailstorm had me staring out the screen

The cat ran wildly for ten minutes

from the window to the box to the room

 

My doctor did not tell me that the pills

prevented seizures. She said I am like the other girls

with high anxiety and then unbuttoned my shirt

The pins and needles in my fingers are real.

The fizzy noises from my coca-cola

are real. The ceiling moving, real?

 

You did not say you were going to leave tonight.

She did not say these pills would make me quiet.