Odes to Lithium

Shira Erlichman

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781948579032
• eBook ISBN: 9781948579599
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Captivating poems and visual art seek to bring comfort and solidarity to anyone living with Bipolar Disorder.

In this remarkable debut, Shira Erlichman pens a love letter to Lithium, her medication for Bipolar Disorder. With inventiveness, compassion, and humor, she thrusts us into a world of unconventional praise. From an unexpected encounter with her grandmother’s ghost, to a bubble bath with Bj?rk, to her plumber’s confession that he, too, has Bipolar, Erlichman buoyantly topples stigma against the mentally ill. These are necessary odes to self-acceptance, resilience, and the jagged path toward healing. With startling language, and accompanied by her bold drawings and collages, she gives us a sparkling, original view into what makes us human.

II

COCKROACH

I’M SITTING WITH BJÖRK IN MY BATHTUB

& she leans, takes my knee in her mouth, like a puppy.

this is her song. I am a pale mountain from her native

landscape. she moans & it is my name. it is not sexy, it is

sexual. my blue wrist suckled in her other mouth is an

enchilada. I think about how my car won’t sell on

Craigslist. I think about how ill-prepared I am to do my

taxes. she can tell my mind is elsewhere. she doesn’t

mind. she sucks a peach. I take her photograph & it is a

Selfie. there are so many ways to need yourself. a faint

nipple through the bubbles. she has no reason to hide

from me. we are sisters in the army of almost. it is the

way we flirt. we are never bored. Björk uses a can-

opener to open the bathwater. it’s working.

she slides my mental hospital evaluation papers into the

water, so they dissipate into tiny paper fish. this is her

song. I am a mossy stone remembering its past life as a

bird. she names every doctor who never met my eye. it is

not political, it is a curse. my chest is an ivy wall

replenished by her hacking hands. I think about how I

threw up the bad medicine. I think about being told to

just swallow it. she can tell I am reliving the neon isolation

of mind-jail. she doesn’t flinch. just sucks a jawbreaker. I

see her tongue change color & exhale a fuck of rivers.

there are so many ways to crown yourself. a perfect

nipple glaciers thru. she has no reason to judge me. we

are sisters in the queendom of Self. it is the way we work.

we are sweetened sweat. Björk puts a straw to my

forehead & drinks the suds. it’s lovely. her eyes are truth

wagons chugging along ancient dirt.

DEAR DR. STONE

Doctor at the Trauma Unit at McLean Hospital,

or at least when I met you, you were.

I say your name because I can’t believe it is your name.

How appropriate. You who called me out of my small room

in the mental hospital,

off my bed where I sat stunned,

having just arrived in the unblinking light of 7 a.m.

having slept on a gurney in the ER.

You stared straight through my skull

like there was a movie on behind me

and listed medications to it.

You deserve your name.

I remember thinking that.

Looking into the prophecy of your face

and seeing a hard substance,

center of a drupaceous fruit, as in a peach.

Stone, also a verb, to throw stones at,

to kill by throwing stones.

You listed “Trihexyphenidyl” and I said, “I’ve taken that.”

You said, “Seroquel and Risperdal.” I remember

I even tried to like you, starting with the mole on your chin.

I thought, If I can like that small brown stone,

I can like her.

Your lips were tight, your chin barely bobbed,

your eyes committed to the plot of abyss through and behind me,

but I tried, because even on the worst of all mornings,

I wanted to trust something, even if it was you.

Wanted your name to foretell a polishing.

In the electric glaze of a mania-maze I felt

a smooth baby shark swimming in my cerebellum

and I kept saying,

“I’ve taken that.”

You landed on “Abilify.” I said,

“That one made me throw up, it made me sick.”

Monotone, you instructed,

“You’re going to take it again.”

Through the slap of neon lights, to a face unmoving:

“But I took it, it made me puke.”

You wrote the prescription.

Maybe you were a mother. It was possible.

Maybe you were dead. There are ways

to be both. Maybe you once became a doctor to heal

an unhealable fissure in your quiet and flaming past,

or because you were curious, passionate, even

kind. Now here I was, one of many puzzlebodies

come to sit in your windowless room, rickety proof

of a faulty universe, a Godless God,

girl who couldn’t or wouldn’t be solved.

There is a calculus to apathy.

I retreated to my small room to sleep

two days on a wiry bed frame on public sheets

that had belonged to others’ private sweat.

On the first day I swallowed your prescription

and collaged a paper-mache journal.

On the second day I vomited

the Abilify on the carpet.

When I returned to your office,

you checked some boxes,

made no eye contact,

said, “Well, now we know.”

THERE WERE OTHERS

I have to be honest with you: there were others.

& some of them were good. Before you gilded my hippocampus

I lay in bed with fireworks: antipsychotics, their distant cousins,

Risperdal, Abilify, all the dizziest bees.

When the SSRIs asked me to dance, I danced, heavier than I’ve ever been,

a weeping clockwork, but at least in motion.

Some even pinched a smile from me. I know you want to know:

Were they better Did I love them Would I ever go back Who was she.

But if you could see what they gave me: years.

From the bottom of the lake they scraped my literacy for breathing.

Or: my mother & I, side by side on a king-size bed, reading

while they ambled & flit through my thick helplessness.

I read books. I cooked meals. Forgive me.

MARGOT

We’re at camp, skipping archery.

The cabin is dark, poorly sewn curtains

left loose. Margot has silky brown hair

to my tangles, breasts to my not yet.

On the top bunk, my head in her lap,

she cups my chin, draws a mustache

beneath my bottom lip, says,

“Talk.” I sing, going the extra mile.

Her face, also two faces. Lying

in her lap, the world flips rightside down.

It doesn’t matter if she’ll love me back.

We’re getting away with something.

THE TWO THINGS I REMEMBER FROM FRESHMAN PHYSICS CLASS

1. Ms. Kissel’s deep love for her ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Note to the Reader
• Contents
• Dedication
• I: Knife-Flower
• II: Cockroach
• III: Baby & I
• IV: The Monk
• Notes
• Acknowledgments