Study yourself- measure the intangible thing exactly.
Collect the data, but throw it out - you exaggerated.
Describe your experience, in detail, but know that
it's just a formality, for insurance- you seem fine.
Results of our studies say you're simply not real.
It isn't possible, no way around it. No way around
the system we've created to keep mercy confined
inside the sterile bottle of preapproved problems and solutions.
This has never happened to us, so it cannot happen to you.
This is not something I've seen before- and I am God.
This isn't pain, it's nothing, just a sham, a trend, vanity.
This must be fun, writing sad little pleas for help, cancelling life,
quitting your job all for the sake of playing pretend. Playing sick.
This would all go away if you would just lose a little weight,
grow so thin we could tuck you in an envelope with the bill and
send you back home. Come back when you're dead.
Are you sure you're not just anxious? Insane? Confused?
Are you secretly drinking rat poison, but you forgot?
Are you trying to get out of having to enjoy life?
Are you sure you're not just hysterical, womb wandering angrily
through your psyche, whispering silly things it read on the internet?
Are you simply an interloper here to ruin our day
by insisting that you are not a healthy young woman
who simply needs to get a hobby? Get laid? Get lost?
Have you tried gratitude? Yoga? Mindfulness? God? Satan?
Tums? Shutting up? Ibuprofen? Having a baby?
Have you tried being an entirely different person, the right kind?
Have you considered that you're not medically but
spiritually defective, missing a piece of your soul?
Have you considered that we're simply not willing to try
because the only thing wrong with you is you
and you've become quite a burden to us all?
We're sure you think you are sick- but we're sick of you.
We're sure you're just looking for attention, sympathy,
to challenge us, to get some mysterious satisfaction.
You must love spending all your time here, paying us in blood,
ignoring our script, writing your own. We've got your number-
in just a few rushed moments, forty five minutes late, we've
disassembled you in our heads, lost the screws, determined that
you're simply of subclinical importance. Here's that bill.
