by Kim Sharp
1.
You remember being picked up from your grandparents’ house, climbing into your father’s yellow pickup, asking where your mother was. You buckled your seatbelt and sat silent on the drive home. You remember a particular smell, like boiled hotdogs and cheap plastic.
Shock therapy and
hospitalization—she’d
leave for weeks on end.
2.
After asking too many questions, you learn that her first depressive episode came shortly after you were born. Postpartum depression developed into manic depression. Your entrance into this world set forth a chain of events that led to everything you have since experienced.
Little brown bottles
sit in perfect rows in your
bathroom cabinet.
