I made the mistake tonight
Of asking my husband
The love of my life
What he thinks of
When my tongue slides across his chest
And between his legs

And I realized
As he described the fantasies
That I have none

It hangs over me
Not like a light bulb
Not even a stormcloud
But rather some sort of light sucking void

This imagination-less life in which I reside

And I live in fear of them finding me
Finding the parts of me that are unclean
Unpresentable
Unspeakable
(Yet I speak them—certainly unwise)

I spend my life walking this wire
Hoping they do not find the poetry
That tells the story of my identity

My husband’s family are the ones I fear
They are so presentable
So clean
So respectably ordinary

And they believe, in their naivete, that I am the same.

What would they say
If they learned the things he knows
And celebrates
But yet hides from them

Feminist
Agnostic
Madness-driven mystic
Poet
Queer
Prophet
Witch

All they know are the prophylactic sides
Banker
Catholic
Father, the doctor
Brother, a(n almost) priest

They cannot know the truths
That drip from my pen like poison

That my mother left my father
(Because I begged her to)

That Catholic I am through Baptism
(And little else)

And I was the idiot
(5 years ago)
Strutting across the stage
(Of the internet)

And it all
Signified
Nothing

And it all
Signified
Everything

And that was the moment

As I lay with my head pressed to his chest
That I realized
That was the key
The tree of the knowledge of the imaginary

And I finally understood why the mad ones like me
Flee
From the meds and the sanity

It would not only unlock the whimsy
It would Unlock the door to madness

Is that why I cannot access wonderland—?
That is why I cannot access wonderland

The meds that keep me here, rooted in the cleanness and bleakness of sane reality

No wonder so many manic depressives stray the course

Because it is so stark here

Here in the real

Without the pinwheel colors of the imaginary
The flying cars and the backtracking time

And the kisses that glue your feet to the floor
Like electricity

I’m not sure where this is going

Except to tell you

I understand now
Why you skipped the meds
And wandered back into wonderland