How to Call in Sick with Depression
Do not call it depression.
Instead, whittle the disease
and its woolen language
until it is a cough, a flu,
an upset stomach.
Focus on the word “hospital,”
on the word “serious.”
Before any talk of coming back and calendars,
preface each sentence with
“Well, the doctors said…”
and end these conversations
with “…but I don’t know,
we just don’t know.”
Try to shrug loud and convincing enough
that your boss can hear it
through the phone.
Do not call your brain
a Death Valley pond,
shriveling with gasping
with cooked fish and cracked brown kelp.
Do not call your apartment
a marshland yawning with looped snakes
or how you feet slip into and under
the tide of your quicksand couch.
Make your sad and weep
and nebulous unwell
a memo
a bulletin
an email
CC’d to all.
When your boss asks
if everything is OK,
do not tell him that there is no “Everything.”
Do not tell him that Everything is a wet wide mouth
dotted with flat soft blue teeth
and it is determined to bite
through your spine.
Instead, tell him
“yes.”
Tell him
You just need to take care of some things.
You just need some time off to get better.
And better is not a chalk line horizon, discovered but already dead and your life
is a busy mortician rouging out the gray, the stiff, the dry crack of a body after it’s used.
Tell him
You are fine.
You just need the time off.
Tell him you can’t wait
to get back to work.
Billie Sainwood is a poet and writer from Atlanta. Her work has been featured in the The Passionfruit Review, Don’t Submit Magazine, and the NoSleep podcast. She keeps a diary of her inspirations and neuroses online at https://billiewritespoems.com/.