Every time the doctor sighs
looks me in the face, a faint smile playing around his lips
eyes sketching scars into my cheeks as if I am nothing
more than a shrunken pea
another idiotic woman
a googler
a giver-upper
a hypochondriac who loves the drama
I think of lunging across the desk between us and strangling him with his stethoscope
watching his eyes grow wide & asking him: have you tried Valium?
Therapy? Turning off Casualty?
& seeing him suddenly realise and apologise
But instead I sit quietly & wait
for the next patronising question
and wish I could say:
the night has teeth & so do the inside of my ribs
my joints are the chalk breaking against the chalkboard
my heart’s a formula one car & my body’s the barrier it crashes into
my stomach’s filled with cement & so’s my head
my spine’s the drill that’s tunnelling into it
as he closes the pink file full of everything
that’s not wrong with me
& wraps up another useless consultation
I stare at the top of his round, balding head
& wish I could scoop out my insides
& say, here —
take it, take it
Freyja Jones is a writer who has just finished her MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck School of Arts. Her writing has previously been published in VAGABOND CITY and Girls Get Busy. @freyja_lillie