a therapist
prescribed me rose-tinted glasses.
she told me
my view was too blue and the pink
would counteract my countenance
so i would
finally
see normally.
a “shift of perspective”
she called it. i didn’t
tell her that the color i saw wasn’t blue, it was gray; i didn’t
tell her i had fifty pairs at home, perched pristinely on the vanity; i didn’t
tell her i pressed them onto my nose and stared into the mirror; i didn’t
tell her the only shift of perspective
was the way the world
became blurry,
water welling up and
flinging a flimsy filter
onto my mirror when
i realized this wasn’t working,
this wouldn’t work.

instead, i smiled
and added another pair to my collection –
this time,
it was different. this time,
when i put them on and
nothing changed,
i convinced myself that it did.
i swore i saw swirls of scintillating salmon in the sky,
swore sunrise was less montonous and sunset less muted.
“it’s gonna get better, it’s better, i’m better” ran through
my mind, up
my throat, out
my mouth and swirled
in the air and coated every surface until
my breath was reduced
to those words:
it’s gonna get better, it’s better, i’m better.

and each day battered the words,
each hour chipped away at their strength,
each minute batted them out of the air until
i was lightheaded from oxygen deprivation, stuck
gasping with a gaping mouth in a vacuum.

when i shattered my rose-tinted glasses
and used the shards to carve
two neat little lanes up my forearms, when
i smeared the rivulets of
blood across my eyes –
because a pink filter hadn’t worked, but maybe,
maybe red would –
i whispered to myself:
it’s gonna get better, it’s better, i’m better.