The Summer I was wrong, or arrogant, or hopeful, I told my Psychiatrist I could be rid of you
by ⅔. In fact, I’d started adjusting the dose myself. I’m being honest with you, I told her,
I feel fine. When she listened without flinching, when she agreed to swiftly diminish
your touch, her office was rock still. We were on the 18th floor of a skyscraper.
She was pregnant, her hands folded over new life. You are a graceful
mammoth. You didn’t wince, or scream. My baby, I should have
listened. I would have heard your loyalty to my darkest waters.
In the ascending months, & the grey matter of sleeplessness,
I came to know what your absence always means. Cliff.
Every day knived sharper & doused in electricity.

Charif Shanahan is the author of Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing, winner of the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Prize and forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press. He is poetry editor of Psychology Tomorrow Magazine.