Never Cereal Again Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Pain doesn’t work for me, being a martyr doesn’t
make me a better person, steel chains around my
head caused by swelling until the insides push so
hard against my skull, if feels like a train smash in
my head; everything: work, relationships, feelings
every aspect of life is destroyed and like a broken
automaton I mechanically repeat the same action,
making tea, feeling worse, drinking hot chocolate
exacerbating everything, a psychopath am I, with-
out a single loving feeling – neither for myself nor
for others, without anchor or lodestar & I worked
so hard to put both in place; all will be lost until
my mind returns, I come to my senses knowing
I have learned never to eat cereal again…