Both disease and cure
will rob you of yourself
my psychiatrist said,
glasses suspended
from a necklace
brash as a trapper’s
trading beads.
I hang from a necklace
strung with pills;
I cannot trade
with anyone—
but I take
the effacing pills.
I remember I chose
this compromised wellness;
It’s too late to choose anew.
To my daughter I say:
there must be a wilderness
at the edge of memory
and mind—
It will have its raw
untilled splendor.
If I grow silent,
believe I still thrive:
I’m blooming like cacti
in crimson petals,
I’m dreaming of oceans
asleep in the dunes.
Remember
I am remembering you
In every moment.
Then, let me be unwise,
and forget my pills,
I want to wander
the dark among Joshua trees.
I want to sleep with
the sand bats
that wake to hunt mayflies,
I want to nest with a peregrine
on a cliff’s edge.
Be kind
and let me go mad
beneath the devouring
moon.
————
Kristin Roedell is a retired attorney and Northwest poet. She is the author of Girls with Gardenias, (Flutter Press, 2013) and Downriver (Aldrich Press 2015). Her work has appeared in over fifty anthologies and journals, including Switched on Gutenberg, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Crab Creek Review.
