I Am Sad But We Also Need Milk

A poem about feeling bad and, just maybe, feeling better

It was hard to know how to introduce today’s poem. When I talk about depression, I am aware that I’ve barely dipped a toe in those depths. Long ago I had a front row seat in the case of my father, and I watched as my mother struggled with depression and anxiety for the first time in her life in her seventies, what we know now were actually some of the first signs of her dementia. Or perhaps she struggled earlier and it was the approaching dementia that made it impossible for her to conceal it any longer. I’ll never know for sure.

I am as susceptible to melancholy as anyone. I have, on a relatively few occasions, experienced something deeper, something with a weight and a pull, something I emerged from almost with the sense of waking from a dream. The weeks following the birth of my first child was one of those times, the loss of a much loved job was another.

For my postpartum depression, my remedy was exercise. Sweat became my medicine. For the lost job, I was stuck fast in grief for a while, but eventually found my way out the other side. When I look back on those times, I can see myself. I was not another person. But I was carrying a heavy weight that made me tired, and made everyday things feel hard. Still, if these are my closest brushes with true depression, I am fortunate, indeed. I find that I am grateful for the window they have given me into the lives of loved ones who struggle daily.

Today’s poem is a rarity for me. It actually started with the title. A whole page in a notebook with just that phrase written at the top and nothing else. It sat like that for years. I came back to it one day, still a couple of years before today, and scratched down a few lines, then a few more. I dusted it off last week when something difficult happened and I felt myself pulling back from day to day things: Not reaching out to friends and family the way I normally would. Avoiding leaving the house when I could get away with it. Working through how to write this poem after letting it lie fallow for so long helped me get out of my rut this time. Sometimes it's a little thing that calls us back to ourselves. This week, for me, it was poetry.

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I Am Sad But We Also Need Milk

Any amount of tragic romance 
to be found in a listless languor
at home fizzles when the refrigerator
reveals that the gallon jug I just rinsed
and recycled was indeed the last one.

I make a list, the order of the aisles etched 
on my brain, and catch myself sighing
between the apples and the toothpaste.
But by milk, located on the last aisle 
at the store, I am resigned to my task.

I grab my keys, if not briskly, then
at least with something like determination.
At the store, I sit for extra moments
in the car looking for the bags, the list,
and the determination I must have left at home.

I sigh again and that is a mistake 
because the sigh invites back 
the sadness and my eyes prickle.
I blink and gather my things, determination
not among them, and exit the car

Resolve will do if determination 
is unavailable at this location, but when 
I tug at a cart and it doesn’t come loose 
from the train I think Oh, lord, 
I’m going to cry in the grocery store.

The moment passes and I make my way
through produce, around the bakery
hub, pink icing and birthday cakes, not at
my usual no-nonsense trot, but still 
faster than the amblers here at midday.

On the way to toothpaste, I linger at the 
nail polish, another sigh in my throat. 
I have always suspected that those tiny bottles 
hold magic inside, an anodyne, a curative, 
but for a different kind of woman than me.

Yet I linger, holding a tiny vial 
in my hand, turning it to catch 
the fluorescent glow from above, 
an iridescent shade, now purple, 
now blue, now both at once.

I place the sparkling bottle
in my cart, nestled atop the apples 
so it will not fall through the slots.
So I will not fall through the slots.
And I finish my shopping.

When this sadness will leave
I cannot say, but in the morning when 
I wake, the nail polish will wink at me 
from the glass shelf above the sink and 
I will know that there is milk for breakfast.

---

I’m enjoying the first couple of days of Petra Hernandez’s February Poetry Adventure

February Poetry Adventure Prompts

It’s great structure and encouragement to write without worrying too much about the results. Maybe I’ll see you in the comments there?

Thanks for reading, everybody! It’s really great to have you here.