When the doctor asks me to point to the sadness scale on the wall
to rate how I’m feeling today, a 6 or a 10, I don’t think
This is a body I wish I could jump off of like the Brooklyn Bridge,
I think You’ve never seen me naked.
You read chemistry books about combustion reactions and wood splints
that burn when inserted into oxygen, the molar coefficient of noble gases
and how many grams it takes to raise a substance by one Kelvin,
without ever realizing that chemical equations can never explain
why you wear this sorrow like bloody underwear
after a first date that went wrong.
I enjoy seducing doctors because their cool hands get under my skin
and their tongue depressor gives me a reason to choke up.
When I told Dr. Swan I wanted to kill myself, he said
“sign this form.” When I told Dr. Hemingway I enjoyed
romantic confessions in which the boy’s the one to say he’s sorry,
and bubbles that escape from a drowning person’s mouth,
she told me to take off my shirt,
shed it like a snake’s skin, to see if there were any new wounds underneath.
I keep tally marks for every therapist who reads Nietzsche
and knows how to spell his name correctly. So far there are two.
You’ve got a sodden mouth that fills with rainwater and a penchant
for cherry wine; you’re the girl that always knew how to love
but never figured out how to leave.