Anti-psychotic

Sometimes the bottles are fat,

little orange trashcans

that hold my sanity.

Sometimes the bottles are skinny,

like hair spray

I’m about to shake and

light on fire;

I’ve always wanted to do that.

They keep telling me stories

of bipolar people

who seem adequately

stable, subdued,

repressed, discreetly

claustrophobic,

and then one day they snap,

pick up crabs on the beach,

pluck the black caviar eyes off,

the thin shafts

protruding from their shells

like flowerless stems.

“He started hearing voices,

we thought he was fine and then…”

I hoard the bottles now,

leaving some here,

some there,

dotting the corners of my bedroom,

reminders that no matter

how good

I feel, I still ran

into that cabin room last year,

with everyone watching,

and I screamed

and shuddered,

backing into a corner,

maniacally shrieking

and shrinking away

from fear that had no source,

Fear that settled in like

a disease

and never really left.

It’s there somewhere,

dormant in the seams of my skull,

and I fear that fear

more than I value my life.

So I clutch the orange bottles,

and sometimes my hands tremble,

but I shake out my vitality

from its plastic asylum,

knowing I’d rather be the crab

than the mutilator.