an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
but I've been eating words,
can you tell me what that means?
does the doctor listen when I talk?
everyone ignores me, but he said he listens.
for a moment, for a second, I believed him.
"great session," he would say.
"how about another next week?"
in such a short time, I would spill the words I had stomached.
"just keep talking," he would encourage.
"keep going." so I would.
lost lovers, absent parents, broken friendships;
many days, I didn't know where to start.
nothing would come up for a while.
only sometimes I couldn't start speaking fast enough.
parents came up, a lot.
quite a lot.
rocks would crawl up my throat and
scrape my tongue as I spoke.
trees would grow from the seeds he, the doctor, planted in my head.
under other circumstances, I would never have spoken.
various times while talking to him, I would tell him so.
"well," he would say, "how would you get better if you didn't say anything?" then he would put
x's through boxes on his sheet, and I would keep going.
you said an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but he said that was incorrect.
zero doctors stayed away from me, so I have to agree.
