I Am Seeing A Psychiatrist And She Is Treating Me Well
I am seeing a psychiatrist and she is treating me well. In the morning she cuts me slices of panettone, pours me cups of espressos. Never am I left wanting.
I am seeing a psychiatrist and she is treating me well. After breakfast she leaves me wearing high-waisted skirts and black tights. Her long legs hidden, they seem like stilts. Later, she will be my beautiful octopus.
I am seeing a psychiatrist and she is treating me well. All day long while she is away, I write at our kitchen table. Light comes through a first floor window and I can see her, legs crossed, sitting in a sturdy oak chair. A leather black couch across from her as she wears brown-rimmed glasses. I hear her soft voice as she is gazing out her window and imagining me imagining her. Forever and ever like that, we are back and forth.
I am seeing a psychiatrist and she is treating me well. She tells me I am the best, and I believe her. When she comes home I breathe in the remains of her perfume mixed with the faintest curl of smoke from the candle she burns for her patients. I bend to my knees. I kiss the hem of her blouse. I kiss the coarse fabric of her dress.
I am seeing a psychiatrist and she is treating me well. Her parents were born in Italy. She tells them I am meaty and honest and they know it is different with us. It is different, she could tell, as when she told them she found herself calculating her life with someone she did not yet know but did not want to live without.
I am seeing a psychiatrist and she is treating me well. She has not lived with another, as I have not lived with another. But we know it is right. I do not worry when I think of how quickly we have moved. Her religion is kindness. Her eyes are chocolate chip cookies. Her breasts are small and perfect.
I am seeing a psychiatrist and she is treating me well. I met her while walking down the aisle. Outdoors on the grass under southern trees near a swampy lake with wavy reeds going out to the water and a long dock where the bride and groom took off in a boat. We talked there as the sun set, and I knew I wanted to be with her by how she laughed, by how her dress fit differently than the others. Like she had grown up reading the European issues of Vogue.
I am seeing a psychiatrist and she is treating me well. She does not belong to a writing group or a writing collective. She does not use social media. She works each day solving problems for actual people. She is my wife and I am her husband. We live in a Park Slope brownstown and her only patients are the sons and daughters of playwrights. Sometimes, because it so good, it does not seem real.
I am lying on this couch seeing a psychiatrist who says I need to start seeing people once again.
But I am seeing a psychiatrist. Who else could I see?