Good Doctor, I forget you are trained,
not bred, to your calling...
Rika Lesser
you were the one she trusted
your brilliance she touted
your compassion she drank like sacred wine
then
her perceptions, her suspicions, your overtures
she buried deep in the very unconscious
you were supposed to set free
you destroyed her with your body
stepped over her like fruit left to rot
in a muddy field
the cops didn't think much of you
when they answered the call--
you looked like any other corpse
gray and hollow
notify the coroner
another one fell down the slipper slope
bled out on the fragments of ego and ethics
you were the one she trusted
you let us all down
scrambling to make sense
of a senseless action
lining up for the next therapist--
waiting to hear it will be all right
Joan Rizzo is a writer and mental health activist living with a bipolar disorder. Her poetry has appeared in The Awakenings Review and the National Catholic Reporter. She would like to dedicate her contribution to this issue of The Awakenings Review to the memory of her brother, Steven Rizzo, who took his own life twenty years ago.