June 10, 2007

from "Ten Lives in Mental Illness"

PANIC ATTACKS

In a dream I had a heart attack and forgot how to breathe. Then the dream followed me to my real life and no one would have sex with me. Not even the people I asked nicely. In the shower I would shake and shake. In the shower my husband would come in and try to have sex with me, but I did not want his dick. I wanted a row of dicks all filled to their tips with oxygen. I went from shower to bed, to shower to bed, never really getting anywhere.

SCHIZOPHRENIA

A bunny came to my room and gave me a wish. He was actually part bunny and part man. He had waited for a new head but no one could find him one. His head was enormously large. He had walked into my room and smarted his head on the ceiling. I am all head I said and showed him I had no legs. He smiled and rubbed my tummy with a smooth washcloth and then a coarse one. There was nothing new in the world there at that moment and I assure you there is nothing new now either.

Dorothea Lasky. Awe. Wave Books, 2007