We're All Mad Here

After a particularly nothing-to-report session
with my therapist, I retire to Esquire's coffee shop.
Mocha frappe and cheesecake (I'll go to the gym
twice tomorrow) to hand, I break out
Gilbert and Gubar's 'Mad Woman in the Attic'
and my 'Jane Eyre' essay. You told me I was Jane.
Today I think I'm Bertha-Jane... And last night
I was Bertha. But we won't go into that.

There's a girl at the table to my right,
curled up in her chair and retreating
into a bottle-green hoody like a snail.
She must be at least my age, yet
she's clutching a soft toy penguin.
In her other hand, as if to compensate,
a very-intellectual-looking book
whose title I can't make out.

She then proceeds to take out three
bottles of Bach's original flower remedies.
One by one, she places them on the table
in front of her, then takes a drip-sip from each.
I picture my own little Alice-vial, shoved
in my bedside drawer - bought that black day,
almost a month ago now, when I refused
to get out of bed.

(Ryan sat with me in the dark for an hour,
before dragging me to Boots for
daylight-robbery-herbal-remedy-bullshit.)
I don't realise I'm staring until she looks up
at me accusingly; embarrassed, annoyed.
I dive behind 'Mad Woman', but can
feel her glares burning through the book with
angry and-what-would-you-know-about its

and do-you-know-how-lucky-you-ares.
And I want nothing more than to raise
my hands in surrender. Tell her:
I do know about it. And actually,
I'm not as lucky as you might think,
although, admittedly, I'm luckier than most.
Tell her: the whole world is as mad as a hatter,
but hang in there; somehow, it will, just has to, get better.