Electric Exorcism

My alternative healer told me
I had a lot of pressure in my sacrum
And was I carrying a weight.

My somatic coach told me
I leaned far forward when I spoke
And was I able to stay in my center.

My doctor told me
I was presenting significant depression symptoms
And was I interested in being medicated.

So I stretched and sighed and straightened my posture.
I slowed my breathing and stopped reading the news and took sertraline.
This is how you get better.

I play these layers over and over in my head
as I steady myself with my breath
laying with my back against the cold tile
of the Denver Renaissance Hotel bathroom floor.
Phone out of reach, black silk dress
hanging expectantly on its hook
alone and limp on a Saturday night
the recurrent sudden voltage down my spine
dictating the terms of my temporary paralysis.

If it didn’t hurt so much to laugh I would
staring at the white ceiling thinking
of my makeup splayed on the marble counter
and all the ways in which the last year
has perfectly prepared me
to be lying here pantsless beyond reach
having to summon something without encouragement or witness
to drag myself across the floor.

I do not cry. Instead I think of bodies
and how they are really just bags of bones and organs
threaded by electric current
with personalities attached.
And we can short-circuit
at any time, it turns out,
as the next morning I faint
blindly and silently
into the arms of a man on the street
who catches me under my armpits
as I fall to my knees.

Laying in my hospital bed
I have been electrified into stillness
my bottom half a live wire
that cracks the whole facade of controlled circuitry
wide open.

After a year of being asked to withstand
in order to be resilient
to stand for all of the principles and values
in every single decision
even the inextricably impossible ones
my body decides
it actually will not be standing at all
for this crippling sadness
this debilitating uncertainty
this collective delusion
that we can ever fully return
to everything we used to do.