Fractal
—on suicidal depression
Apartment One
The elevator goes up a floor.
I take a breath and open the door.
Kids, all shapes and forms, surround me.
A blond boy whispers: ICU.
A brunette girl lifts a mirror;
I watch decay. A red-haired girl
pokes my chest, hands me the rope.
I turn, I run, fist a hope.
Apartment Two
The elevator goes up a floor.
I swallow hard and open the door.
Friends, in all shapes and forms, surround me,
welcoming me into their plots.
Jenny’s laughter’s a bleeding blade.
Jerome’s high five’s a fisherman’s trap.
Jonathan’s invite to a party
On Friday reads like a subpoena.
I plead for counsel. Silence there.
Defeated, I leave, gasping for air.
Apartment Three
The elevator goes up a floor.
I step back, then open the door.
Screens, all shapes and forms, insult me.
Fortune, medals, lust, fame—
supposedly mine—now have no name.
Lady-Lazarus-like, I rise
Shouting screams. Smashing screens.
Charging and piercing through the portal.
Off I jump, escaping the fractal.
Golan Shahar, Ph.D., is a professor of clinical-health psychology and public health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and an adjunct professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. His research examines stress, psychopathology, and mind–body processes. His creative writing, in both English and Hebrew, has appeared in On the Hill and Psychoanalytic Inquiry.
