[poetry] the last resort

If I did this to myself, could you ever forgive me?

I mean, what if I’d scrolled all the way through those self-help tips? My old dance instructor taught meditation, you know. I never did wash that 32oz water bottle. There was that one time I didn’t wear the KN95, because I liked how my makeup looked that day. Some people say antidepressants can treat it. Some people say if you sleep eight hours a night, you’ll never be sick a day in your life. If I’d really stuck to that streak of mine, low-sugar high-protein; if I’d taken more supplements, maybe. If I actually listened to my dentist and flossed. I used to watch medical dramas like young women living alone watch true crime: If I listen closely it won’t happen to me. If I look closely it won’t happen to me.

I might’ve tried a little harder that summer — might’ve gone to the local CVS and thrown myself under the counter and screamed and ripped at my hair until someone said Jesus fucking Christ shut up already and checked in the back, and found an old bottle of fluoxetine, or called the cops. I might’ve been more unrepentant. Or converted sooner. I didn’t wait half the year to read that Pesach blessing to be appropriate; I waited because I didn’t think of myself as sick. I thought, what if I don’t need to be loved? What if I can stand in line forever?

In middle school I did this experiment to see if plants would grow in a closet and they would, that wasn’t the problem; the problem was that I could never keep the room completely dark. So from the start they knew light and they knew I was keeping it from them. I could’ve changed things, but it wasn’t in the plan. It wasn’t that they were doing wrong, and certainly not that the love wasn’t there.

If I were the same arbiter of myself — if this weren’t God and atoms and inflammation — I wonder what you’d say. If I’d wanted so much that I grew legs and climbed out of the dirt. If I walked to the door. A plant is just a plant, but we’re all humans and self-defining. I grew up in an atelier, light, all light. From here I can see the whole world, and even now, they’re cleaning my window.