no one breaks my heart quite like our nation’s health insurance policies.
it’s not to say that I do not fraternize often with the act of putting myself in situations that want to make me cry – often – on the reg – yesterday I looked up all my exes on Instagram – tacked fifteen new tasks on my to do list and there goes my weekend – started my day with a stranger across a desk asking me about my pelvic floor – smiled at a man reading some pretty poems who I have both spent years missing and can never forgive for the hurt – I am aces at welcoming in small acts of destruction – but no one has ever left me – ragged – bare bones – white knuckle contempt – gutted like a mackerel – a stupid little blonde – quite like you – you reach into my pocket and count the nickels – say I’ve come up short again – I think I understand your ever changing personality – only for a receptionist to well actually my words – simple child – the cost of taking care of oneself – I have cried in so many locked bathrooms – doctors and dentists and specialists and massage therapists offices – more times than I can count – you wrap your tendrils around my neck – say there is a price tag on my body – a sticker sale on my brain – I wish I never left New Zealand – I wish I did not need a YouTube comedian to explain deductibles and premiums – I wish I could keep it together in waiting rooms filled with strangers – you tighten the grip on my neck – croak that I am just a cog – a penny-pinching buffoon – pathetic little American – dance if I want to feel well – pray if I need to know what’s wrong with my hippocampus – my pussy – my enamel – I scrape and scrape and scrape – and this country does not answer the promised help line – your hand clamped on the receiver – you like me best this way – scared – accepting – credit card in hand – you pick at me like a crow – until I am nothing but cartilage and sinew – only then do you stop picking – stop draining me – only when I am dead will you move on – to the next body
* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are producs of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
