Needling Me

i want cured
of everything, i lay
my pulses open and close eyed
he reads my heart, my liver
places my hand down
announces me fragile as if i
didn't know - i am lying on his couch
in my pants and bra and his thin blanket makes
a swaddled baby of me or i am stone
like that woman on a tomb
in the cathedral
he eases short needles into my ear, this man
who will walk the streets of my town with my ailments
(a long list) up his sleeve i don't want to meet
his eye in the queue
at the butcher's or over the tesco checkout - i don't want to
meet
his wife and their precious nuclear one of each in the right
order
when the ragged truth of my life is in his fountain pen notes
in a manila folder - don't tell me he walks away from all
that when i write the cheque and shut the treatment
room door we, his patients, are walking case
studies secrets leaking from the pinholes
in us, we are watering can roses
spilling our sexual histories
our menstrual cycles,
our stuggles
against addiction
our hayfever
asthma
warts
Let's Calm You Down, he says
finding points on my foot
breathe in
breathe out
fuck that
i want it all to be better
i want it
now