Elizabeth Hassler: as depression is a breakfastfood,

as depression is a breakfastfood,

ee cummings doesn't scan correctly.

sometimes she chokes

---not like christy brown;

more figuratively.

shit. citing grammar rebels and spastic poets

will send tremors through her body

of work.

hypomania for lunch, on weekdays,

and she has only recently stopped reading other

people's suicide notes

for de(s)sert. lately

she eats cake instead.

boundaries

have new texture

on her teeth, but

even amidst all this self-discovery

she is still a really real depressed person

(goddammit).

other unfortunate facts:

she didn't draw herself

childhood trauma

in art therapy.

she eats really real depression,

or sometimes cereal,

for breakfast.

isn't cereal tragic

when a spastic eats it? they

choke, you know.

a graphic on the internet told her

she has four of the ten

impairments

commonly associated with cerebral palsy

---that makes her real,

yes? really

medicalized. real and really

to be fixed.

the next day,

a declaration of rights

listed bipolar as cognitive impairment:

the whims of statistics, and

that makes her unreal.

people don't listen

unless she uses big words,

people use "brilliance"

as a bargaining chip,

so she eats the dictionary

at all square meals. she wants words

that don't exist.

she wants intimacies

unspoken. when she wants

to die, which is a sharp want

nestled among her desires some hours

(it signifies

a gap in her meals: sometimes

for months without a plan),

it isn't because

she's a crippled girl.

also, it isn't because she hates her depression

or thinks life is pain---body

aches and misfired nerves

mean more to her about aliveness

than desperation

---or is really going to kill herself

in actuality (she's not,

like, impulsive,

and even if her

inertia wasn't generally productive of stasis she has promised

to Live For The Cause).

she should probably

eat lamotrigine with breakfast

now, and again.

she's writing this

to clean up breakfast dishes.

she wants the kind of life

not predicated on awareness:

can you see her?

is it safe?

can you hold her here?

queerness is the safe place

for her body, her spasming skins.

when i say that i attempt

these love letters to her body,

i mean the verse-writing

form that wanted to die today

after breakfast and needs to live

just so long and long enough.

                      --Elizabeth Hassler