The Sick Girl's Guide to Love

This collection contains themes of chronic illness, mental illness, OCD, and personal trauma. Please take care in reading :)

The Sick Girl’s Guide to Love

By. MJB

Biological Warfare 

Sometimes what we think is cosmic attraction

turns out to just be a chemical reaction,

So– 

I’m sure biology explains 

the feeling 

we were reuniting

from one thousand lifetimes prior.

My soul could not have journeyed that far anyway.

She would surely be wiser by now

if she had traversed the tundra of time.

Ah yes,

as a woman of God,

it comforts me to know 

that the anatomical desire to multiply 

explains my delusions

of love.

Why I Can’t Wear This

A lamentation on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

I am cold 

and

your sweatshirt is staring at me.

It’s on my chair

just sitting there

and it’s

not 

fair. 

This doubt is eating me.

It’s biting down,

It shakes the ground

It’s taking me to where

I can’t be found

– inside myself (that’s where I go)

a child wanders to and fro

and searches high

and searches low

for any ounce of that old glow.

The glow that makes you love man

(or even just believe you can).

But how could I when all I am

is aches, and pains, and second hand?

Yes– second hand from other men

where I had tried and tried again

to be more than a toy to them,

a number scale, a one through ten.

So if I put this sweatshirt on

and wear it till the night is gone,

what if I wake to find it wrong

and you another vicious con?

Well then I will have worn your scent

and given you a small percent

of that small glow that’s so absent.

And space? My heart has none for rent.

I guess perhaps I’ll be alone,

and cry that no one ever knows

the way I smile when it snows,

and how I tie my shoes in bows. 

And here’s the circles, neat and clean.

Distinguish - please - the ends and means.

You can’t discern my psyche’s scheme

to make me my own enemy.

Lucky Bird

How lucky you are

to have such a thin, pretty cage!

Never mind that creaking and aching,

or that you were compressed

and lost a few bars,

and now you’re always dizzy,

and your gut doesn’t function,

and your winged soul

can’t escape to fly.

Ohhhhh if I were in a cage like yours,

I’d be much happier than you.

I wouldn’t mind being chilly or tired 

like you chirp so often. 

I’d fluff my feathers and know that all the bird watchers

found me agreeable to look at.

Afterall,

what could be more important

than being wanted?

Yes, it’s such a thin, pretty cage!

Oh, how we all love to look at it!

Matriarchal Lessons

These flowers are lovely,

but when I sit across from you at dinner

I see Great Grandma Leola,

with her drowned husband,

and the time she didn’t have to miss him.

I see Grandma Gloria,

betrayed, taken advantage of, and divorced

(and that story my great aunts tell

about how she wouldn’t leave the bed for a week).

And maybe I even see Mom,

married to a good man, but married to his broken heart more,

whispering in the kitchen when he’s in a foul mood

so she won’t upset him further.

I see so many married mothers who parent alone,

and women with bruises covered in makeup,

and so many women in my life

who cry in the dark, but smile to a man

and I vow not to become them,

no matter who covers the check tonight.

Surely Great Grandma did not raise 6 girls and a soldier by herself,

And Grandma did not get shunned from the church,

And Mom didn’t learn to love despite her missing father,

for me to turn around

and do it all again.