Bipolar Blonde

You see my lipstick, my cotton-candy nails, my smile dripping starlight, my eyes twinkling with constellations of the many worlds I’ve seen-

You see the way I tilt my head back to laugh at the moon, though you miss the lupine glint of my teeth, and the way my throat works, wanting to howl at the swollen white orb-

You see the way I am on my back, screaming in pleasure at your hands and tongue, my body a temple of the gods and goddesses we invoked in our passion-

You see these, and you think it’s the whole of me, the completed painting, a finished novel you can close with a satisfied sigh, the last note of a song on the radio sputtering forth in an artless, silent night.

There is a darkness in me, that so very few see.

Every night, instead of prayers at my bedside, I worship the pills that bring me rest and sanity, swallowing down these large, oval, chemical things with my eyes shut tight against the oncoming beasts.

Without these pills, do you know what I’d be?

A monster, the one that lies in wait in the closet when you shiver in your dreams, the succubus that will suck you dry as a husk on your chariot-golden fantasies, the phantom that slips around you on slippered, delicate feet, a knife in my hands and blood on the blade.

Bipolar, they called me, and the world crashed around my broken self, only wanting a savior, a light in the nightmare of my newest realm.

They called me “manic” and then “depressive.”

They explained the rage, the sorrow, the pain, the shame-

Could be swept away on a drug-addled brain. I did not say no.

I hated myself, and the word, and the names. Hated the broken path of moonlight echoes. And the numbness of the encroaching world.

I once was a tornado, and I killed the men I loved, brutally reviving them, Frankenstein-like torture, their sins and sewed lips so, lovely, and yet hateful.

I drank whiskey right from the bottle, and then shattered the glass against the wall, pretending it was my body that was broken into bits and pieces after the fall,

I tried to die by taking one too many poisons, and was revived only by my mother’s tears- a poignant pretty potion.

So maybe this new me is “better.”

I laugh, still, and I cry.

But I miss the lows,

Almost as much,

As I miss the highs,

Of a bipolar,

Blonde,

mind.