When he tried to pick me up by mentioning that my depression
turned him on, I hit him over the head with my purse
and thought that would be the end of it. But the next day
he showed up at my front door with a bouquet of plums,
wanting to atone for his mistake by serenading me
with William Carlos Williams’ famous plum poem
on his guitar beneath my window until I forgave him.
As romantic as that sounds, our first night together
was nothing but a hook-up.
Turned the lights off so we didn’t have to look
at one anothers’ unwanted tattoos and piercings
in weird places, fucked for two minutes
before it was over. See, the thing is, undepressed people
think that depression is like a cloud that moves
in front of the sun for a little while. Maybe for just
half an hour; then it slides away and the sun
peeks its face out again. That’s why when he joked
about my “blue moods,” or the small pile of happy pills
I kept hidden like Skittles coveted by a woman on a diet,
I took all his clothes and I threw them out the window,
followed by his car keys and wallet.
When that night’s fireflies nodded their approval
by blinking off in succession, I knew I’d done the right thing.
See, there’s a difference between just a “blue mood”
and a mood that’s so damn blue
that when it sees a photo of itself laid side by side
with a photo of the bottom of the ocean,
it can’t tell which is which.
