You’re looking well

It’s hard to know what to say

Sometimes I forget

How the last ten years drifted away

In a medication fog, in drifts and flurries

Of psychosis that divert life’s road

Down dismal cul-de-sacs.

Watching television

Five minutes at a time,

Listening to a radio

That knows you by name.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner

On a plastic tray.

It took me seven years

To get a degree. My brain

Is as full of holes as my CV.

I have lost loves

Along with my marbles.

It took a part of me.

It’s a tough thing to explain.

Diagnosis doesn’t ease the pain

Of feeling cursed and different

With a rotten shadow for a soul

To drag through endless days

And no one else to blame.

I wish it came with greatness

Like the myth. I wish I was

Hemingway or somebody.

Under treatment it’s just

Weight gain and lethargy

And increased risk of diabetes.

Maybe it will all burn itself out

I’m just twenty seven, there’s a chance

It might. Or someone might save me.

I might find the strength and reason

To fight harder, to feel better.

If there’s a real cure it’s love.

Under the moon and stars where I huddle,

On this baffling rock where my days sit,

Before I pass the sun for the last time

Let me be cured.