Option 1  

Start with do you ever?  

and then let the question hang like a bloated awning  

as you mime a see-saw motion over your wrist.  

Ideal if:  

(a) you are a yellow-haired ER nurse;  

(b) you faked sick to go to Scottsdale for a bachelorette; and,  

(c) you missed the trauma sensitivity training.  

Option 2  

Start with this is what we call a 911 behaviour  

and then be blasted by the quiet contempt of six  

stone-faced women who could be your peers.  

Ideal if:  

(a) you are a medical student on rotation in psychiatry;  

(b) you got roped into facilitating the Managing Emotions seminar; and,  

(c) your supervisor swore this would be a good opportunity.  

Option 3  

Start with hey, did you take one of my razors?  

and deliver it with the feigned nonchalance  

of someone who has tiptoed a thousand tightropes.  

Ideal if:  

(a) you are a boyfriend, gentle and attuned;  

(b) you hate to see the person you love (identify with, rely on) suffer; and,  

(c) you are a taurus-capricorn-taurus who can tell when something is out of place.  

Option 4  

Start with a joke, or a lie, or silence  

and bury it beneath a pageant-queen poise  

that prides itself in agile deflection.  

Ideal if:  

(a) you are afraid to draw attention to yourself;  

(b) you are afraid to be accused of drawing attention to yourself;  

(c) you don’t want to trigger anybody;  

(d) you don’t want to romanticize what is ultimately an inadvisable activity;  

(e) you would rather not upset your mother;  

(f) you would rather not scandalize your colleagues at the corporate wellness event; 

(g) you don’t want to tarnish your reputation as a sensible, tax-paying, do-gooder; 

(h) you don’t want to fuel the trope that white women own Mental Illness™; and,  

(i) you know a name can be an incantation and don’t want to conjure a predecessor; the one Rod Stewart calls the deepest; the preliminary gouge; the seed of the now unsayable pain; the one that trembles beneath the covers, still; awake and alive and always on the precipice of confession.