I can’t grapple with – understand, process, comprehend – the fact that I am, by all evidence against me, very mentally ill. I am sick. I am weak and guilty. There is something – a variety of things – wrong, here. My mother is published in numerous medical journals.

I can still remember the first time I felt true devastation- it was the 28th of January 2019. I’d been keeping two pet mice for almost six months at that point, and I rarely thought about anything else.

no words. even they do not like to stick around to save their sanity. i am not like you,
but i’ll give you children
i’ll try
just promise you’ll make a real thing out of me; a real useful thing. one that talks. and let me hunt for
myself. and for every thing

There are thoughts I have that
I block from escaping my lips.
Sometimes they try to pry them open,
start a mutiny aboard the ship
riding the waves that roll along my tongue.