CW: suicidal ideation

Where I never stopped taking the Lithium 

or the Zyprexa, at 19, 21, 24, 25, so all my paintings

were blank instead of brilliant. I was prevented

from mangling other people’s hearts or quitting

a multitude of jobs, but God

was also prevented from speaking to me

through stones or cliffs or that chain-link fence

breathing light on a street corner in Manhattan.

Perhaps my car’s death at a monastery

never inspired me to promise

I would give away all my possessions. Perhaps I never 

hitched a ride to meet my favorite singer in the world

at an Indian restaurant on 6th street 

where I lost every bit of language 

to her halo of chili peppers and the disarming

sense of food as a foreign thing.

Perhaps I never disappeared upstate.

The ferns never formed a choir

at my knees. I was never suffused with music 

until tears streamed down my face and songs 

multiplied like cars at rush hour 

until they drove through my head and on top of each other, 

all night, all morning, until I forgot

how to sleep or think or read and somehow

found myself on rooftops and bridges, seeking 

the right moment to jump.

Jacks McNamara is a genderqueer writer, artist, activist, podcaster, educator, and healer in Santa Fe, NM. Author of the poetry collection Inbetweenland and co-author of Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project and hosts the podcast So Many Wings. You can find them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @jacksmcnamara. Web: https://jacksmcnamara.net.