Featured Poet - Sandra Rollins

IT DOESN’T HONOR HER

I don’t have to honor her by taking on her pain

but I did it for over forty years now—suffered

mental anguish that made me cry out what

can I do to stop it, what knife to slit my wrists 

as I lie in a tub of warm water to speed up

bleeding or perhaps a car that had no time 

to stop when I quickly jumped in front of it. 

I don’t have to carry feelings of failure

I couldn’t supply love she sought all her life.

Only a child, I struggled to understand 

what it was like to have a father turn away,

a mother who misnamed her sister in front 

of men who came and went in her years

of youth. At five, thirteen, twenty-six, 

now much older, I never had a lifeline

I could throw to her and pull her into enough 

love all her tears would be answered with a

connection she sought but never found.

I don’t honor her by killing off my hopes,

or denying there are possibilities I might find 

love so elusive in her life. I won’t honor her 

by stepping off a chair with a rope tied 

around my neck to jerk life out of me as she did. 

As a child, I had no responsibility to save her 

but I didn’t know that all those years I tried.

THIS IS BIPOLAR DEPRESSION

It comes without invitation.

It comes without warning 

or announcement.;

no premonition or dream

or signal like air's smell before a storm.

There is no sensation, or electrification of space;

no physical or mental cue--

No time to prepare a defense against a thief 

who travels in darkness.

When one wakes, it is here.

Sometime during night

it slipped into a normalcy which, at best,

titters on an edge of abyss.

Once a fall, one must travel alone.

While it ties up a mind, 

it absconds with all hope, 

desire, energy and assuredness 

of identity. 

One can offer no challenge.

This is a truism;

knowledge based on years

battling this foe.

All one can do is close eyes 

and pray for sleep's oblivion 

and retreat of despair's blackness

before one must wake again.

LAMOTRIGNE, VRAYLAR, BUPROPION, TRINTELLIX

Anti-depressants—

There are days staring at a blank screen 

I worry these drugs have stunted my creativity.

I read past work pleasantly surprised how good 

some of it is. I remember how easily

it was to turn up to the page every morning.

Now that I have that most precious of resources,

time, beautiful words don’t flow so easily or as often.

Once doubt sets in, a vicious cycle begins, a dog

chasing its tail, what came first a dry well or

a rainless week? Where does creativity reside? 

Why hide some days, other days one scarcely keeps

up with the muse, writing words or music, painting, 

sculpting, mathematics, quantum physics, any number 

of arts, I wonder if these creators have been awakened 

in night by a chest constricting panic there is nothing left 

to share. What can one turn to in these anxious moments 

of self-doubt. Don’t we all believe product produced 

by liquor-addled minds seen stupendous 

only to be childish musings when seen in

morning’s hangover. Now everyone will see

all success was a fluke, not truly my own,

not a part of me, and not ready to spill forth again

in its moment of ripeness. 

Once I found comfort in knowledge it will happen

again as it always has. What if anti-depressants

have robbed me my essence, like phases of hypomania

and deep depression have stolen huge chunks of life,

replaced it with self-destruction or immobilization.

Two paths to get to the fork in the road—

either choice waits to scar imagination into

numbness, lack, an abyss.

YET ANOTHER DRUG

I go to the psychiatrist’s office,

right on time for my 1:20 appointment.

I tell him, “we have to do something,”

and he gives me a sheet to score the animal

that eats at my brain. Twenty-seven 

out of thirty confirms what I already know. 

So, we start talking meds; those little packages 

of chemicals that will take a slow boat 

through my blood stream and eventually up to 

my brain. I’m on my own six to eight weeks it takes 

to see if the drug will do anything. “Call if things 

get worse or you have any questions,” he says.

DARK WORK

This side a night slayer’s dirty work, 

last wisps of a dream awakened me.

Ah, sweetness of feeling nothing at all, 

hidden from an angry giant named “sadness,” 

on occasion, to hide behind its other name, 

“depression” when it seeks to go further than wound.

When I was a child, I watched a movie—

wanted to be that nun, to be more than good 

but relevant, until I was told I wasn’t Catholic. 

Then, at a loss of direction, 

I became a six-year-old soldier to begin an attack 

upon an enemy I would never defeat.

COCKTAIL

After two decades of feeling like

a guinea pig, trying one drug after

another, being “compliant” taking

those meds that never kept me

from retreating to my bed weeks at a

time, keeping appointments with my 

psychiatrist and my therapist, sitting 

in front of my light therapy lamp 45 

minutes every day, yes, I said 45 minutes 

every day, I was given yet another new 

medication three months ago. Slowly, 

something changed—I started those 

walks friends suggested trying to be helpful 

not understanding with bipolar depression 

sometimes the best I could do was breath.

Slowly, there were more changes—

I realized I hadn’t taken to my refuge,

my bed, at all these past three months. 

I could weather that third “trigger” which, in 

my past, was the limit which would send

me spiraling into deep depression. I actually 

wanted to venture out of my house into 

my beloved garden neglected for so long, 

coaxing life back into dormant plants, 

requesting my climbing roses to parade 

themselves in all their glorious color. 

I no longer am cancelling out on much 

desired plans with friends; I am 

joining in. I paint. I got a part-time job

during this retirement with Tennessee

Performing Arts Center as an usher—

a job I would tell others would be ideal

for me-- able to see musicals, dramas, 

readings, ballets all to my heart’s content—

something in the past that as much as I dreamed

of I knew my illness made me undependable.

I am living my bucket list--learning French, 

travelling, knitting, reading books, painting,

volunteering—in other words, I’m LIVING!

And the world in which I live is vibrant, full of

color—no longer that muted gray of existence 

that was my home much of my life.

The journey to now has been discouraging,

and so slow deep down I felt there was nothing that

would ease this bipolar II person into happiness.

What I’m saying is no one should give up—

ever.