My First Lithium

I was twenty-one, and high and mighty.
I stomped to my psychiatrist, angry.

I took a seat, felt better, turned mellow.
I went in, happy as a child in snow.

Then I asked him for an arm wrestle,
got turned down. I began to whistle

and asked the man where he went to school
as if it mattered, where there were rules

and always someone aberrant to break them.
I had become much more interesting again.

I sang happy songs to a portrait, a windowsill.
He turfed me out, gave me water and a bitter pill

to swallow, like the diagnosis, a habit I had to keep.
Something I never had before, but needed, like sleep….

‘My First Lithium’ appears in:
Michael Byrne 2010, A Man of Emails, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide. ISBN 1 74027 603 0
Michael Byrne 2008, ‘My First Lithium,’ Quadrant, vol LII, issue 3