she consumed your kisses like a pill marked with the label: happiness
self-medicating her mental illness with the potential for love;
a prognosis without a doctor’s presence
but of course, you didn’t cure anything at all
because names for medication never have one syllable
and everybody knows you can’t store a person as an elixir
she still locks away the tender smile you made before you kissed her
in her trinket box of memories mostly untrue
locked away with how frequently she needed to swallow an ‘I love you’
but like all SSRIs, the pain subsides then the demons rise with a wrath felt like no other so you consume any remedy that might demise a depression so oceanic or an anxiety that will paralyse
and that became you
so, when eventually the monsters in her mind did reawake
she grappled and tugged for reassurance from you that she would be okay
but when you told her that you didn’t love her anymore
her throat felt like it was closing
and as you walked out her bedroom door
her heart finished breaking
because you see, it was already fractured from weeks of your ignoring
and the realisation that her medication wasn’t working –
she didn’t just lose you that night
she was forced to swallow the reality of her plight
that she had actually lost herself a year before
when she prescribed you as her antidepressant
