43

yes I am being treated for depression
and I woke up early because of the heat
it does not help to be naked
there are many windows and my skin feels like the thickest blanket of all
very much like a barrier to some sort of imaginary relief

I’m in a dress instead
I have been laying sloppily on my couch
like a pale octopus
it helps to not have bones on a hot day
they only hold you back
structure enables exertion
and that is a bad idea for a fourth of the year

for an entire season I will pretend I have no bones
and I will admit this on the disability application

“sorry, no bones”
“please send check asap”

and I will brag about being a small pile in a dress
and if I make love it will not be very good

I’ve been drinking a lot of water and reading this book
and when something makes me laugh
I reread it out loud and I laugh loudly into the big empty room
and the dress is up around my waist
my underwear have flowers on them and they are old and unsexy

and when something in the book makes me feel good
it is because it resonates with parts of me that feel bad
and I feel good via feeling like someone else has felt something
resembling that badness
and I reread it out loud and
I do it again
until my bones reconstitute
quietly

I drove to the drug store today to pick up three orange tubes
I have had a crush on the pharmacist for two years
I want to be her friend mostly
I want to hang out with her today but she is working
I want to hang out with her today but she is working in a long white coat
I wonder if she needs a drink
I wonder if she ever puts her hair up
she is less like a crush and more like a consistent person in my life

this is the dress I wore to graduation

I took the long way home from the pharmacy
there is a flower memorial by the side of the highway
where dan last existed in a physical realm
the flowers look new and I feel something
I remember a voicemail
and shaking
lots of shaking at the kitchen table
a solid month of shaking, really

on the drive home I thought
“too intelligent to be treated for depression”
“too awake to be treated for depression”
“I hate this very mentality”
“as if I have arrived at a truth”
“and yet here it is”

I often disagree with and hate an idea while I believe it
it seems like these ideas have bones
I practice carving away at them
I practice dismantling both the idea and its terrible bones
how does a thing like that evolve to have bones
it seems like ideas acquire bones when they exist unchecked
for long amounts of time
I am desperately trying now to identify ideas
that don't deserve bones later
it seems like the bones remain even after the idea dies
and the spirit of the idea can resurrect around the bones
every so often

the bones make it possible to feel again
ideas I worked so hard to dismantle 

it is nice to have a partner in the summer if only for the naps
in high school I sculpted my ideas of love
from the naps and the half hearted sex
that followed the tiring of selves 

we would swim or walk and go back to my bed
the sun would get inside of us and render us useless except to each other 
sometimes we would tire ourselves in the bed and then go to bed
because we were tired from being silly in the bed

we were frequently horizontal
and we would doze at 4
and wake into a cooler evening