On Visiting My Psychologist by Jason Gordy Walker

On Visiting My Psychologist

“I’m simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?”
— Emil Cioran

The man inside my head preferred me dead.
I thought I would never write poetry again.

My dishes piled up like regrets in the sink.
I had nowhere to turn for love or help—

all my friends were workaholics or dead.
Instead of calling them, I smoked and wrote

an obituary for myself. What could I say?
The frost blinding my windows never went away—

day after day there was nothing but snow. I tended
to leave my stuffy home, to walk alone while I kidded

myself about such things. Hope felt like a ghost
my years would never know. I’m sorry

how I never called you back, those days you called
and called. I felt fine. My hands, dry and cracked,

flipped pages for hours. The birds packed
the dark green trees. And somehow,

somehow the sun was brighter, almost enthralled.

*

Jason Gordy Walker (he/him/his) has published poems in Broad River Review, Cellpoems, Confrontation, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Measure, One Art, Poetry South, Think, and other journals; his book reviews and interviews have appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Newpages, Subtropics, and the Dos Madres Press Blog. A recipient of scholarships from The New York State Summer Writers Institute, Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference, and The West Chester University Poetry Conference, Walker is an MFA student at the University of Florida.