A Little Sunshine

The ride back
home was silent,
but your eyes
repeated the news for me:

The bipolar stole
my legs to scurry around the room
that night. The rush of thoughts
seething inside my mind
ceased to a stillness that felt
just like waking up to anesthesia.

That day, you didn’t,
not even for a
microsecond, let go
of my quavering, bulging-veined
hand as the doctor proceeded to
expound over all the -osis and -phobia
and -phoria and -thymia
that I have,
in his streamlined, tapestry-walled
clinic that is trying very hard
not to feel clinical.