doctor’s orders

We don’t always know what’s best for us

Reach for the wrong bottle in the medicine cabinet, go out when we should stay in, eat a salad instead of chocolate cake, let him kiss you even though 

you wonder if this is contagious

And of course, you do not get better. In fact it gets worse. 

So before you infect anyone else you go to the doctor and you start to list your symptoms:

My bed is trying to drown me and I wake up in the middle of the day having lived for hours 

When I do sleep it is nightmares strung together like teeth on a chain 

The bottom half of me is quicksand 

The top half is a quarry, a quandary, a black hole

I am in withdrawal but I have not withdrawn

I want to be touched but I do not know how to put out this fire

and doctor, before you ask,

i have been to church and I have lit every candle I own. I have bought a new pair of shoes and washed my pillowcases. I have dried my tears with wet hair and I have written all the poems I had the time to learn.

And so he told me 

that this is the only way we know

how to grow up