The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.<br />Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day<br />I would be grounded, rooted.<br />Said my head would not keep flying away<br />to where the darkness lives.<br /><br />The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.<br />Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.<br />I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.<br />You will find a good man soon.”<br /><br />The first psycho therapist told me to spend<br />three hours each day sitting in a dark closet<br />with my eyes closed and ears plugged.<br />I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking<br />about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.<br /><br />The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.<br />Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness<br />when they care more about what they give<br />than what they get.<br /><br />The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”<br /><br />The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me<br />forget what the trauma said.<br /><br />The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.<br />Nobody wants to hear you cry<br />about the grief inside your bones.”<br /><br />But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped<br />from the George Washington Bridge<br />into the Hudson River convinced<br />he was entirely alone.”<br /><br />My bones said, “Write the poems.