Carbamazepine

by Leanne Toshiko Simpson

I’m not a fan of
anti-convulsants, but I’d 
been clean for so long

and the medical 
fraternity just didn’t 
give a damn. Sometimes,

I feel metallic; 
shivering inside, asleep
on the kitchen floor

without love or a 
life jacket. I’m scared that I
cannot live without

this medication. 
When I was an inpatient, 
I dreamed of progress,

of operating
heavy machinery. Now,
I can look people

in the eye and just
wonder if I will stay free. 
It’s crazy to fight

your body like this:
the burning has almost ceased,
the way I once dreamed.

Wellbutrin

by Leanne Toshiko Simpson

Is this what normal people feel like when they wake up in the morning?
Slug human, repulsed by cigarettes—
don’t let message boards or doctors rule your life. 

Sabotage my day with night sweats and norepinephrine. Remind me
how streets meet at intersections, almost giddy with insomnia.
Is this what normal people feel like when they wake up in the morning? 

I don’t remember orgasms or cutting the tip of my tongue
on my teeth. If you’re young and hardwired like me,
don’t let message boards or doctors rule your life. 

Cry over the small stuff—auditory hallucinations, Walmart,
marriage—punch the steering wheel until your knuckles are bloody.
Is this what normal people feel like when they wake up in the morning?

All I ever did to you was clean, yell and cry; become allergic to my laundry detergent; hardly recognize myself as a person; ask you please,
please don’t let message boards or doctors rule your life.

This is not a “feel good” drug. Give me dopamine uptake, nicotine
withdrawal, sugar pill seizures with my fourth drink. You didn’t really know
what else to say to me. How do normal people wake up in the morning?
Don’t let message boards or doctors rule our life. 

Latuda

by Leanne Toshiko Simpson

On the brink of nightmares, this happened:
I got to the end of what I could take (persevered, stopped, lost, voiced, regained, lived).
I’ve noticed I am very forgetful. It’s been great.
I feel like stabilizing, like exhaustion, like difference.
I feel like it’s choosing the lesser of two evils.
I am a believer in hope, in distress and inner tension,
but the main catch is my family. They said it had been years since they had seen me.
I tried spells and coffee and pulling blood from fatigued limbs,
uncontrollable tongues and constant shaking until
we had no choice but to give it up. I take it with dinner every day and it makes me
spinning tired, mood lifted,
curbed appetite, borderline clean
and for the first time in a long time, I wanted to jump out of my skin. It’s a miracle
I got out.

Leanne Toshiko Simpson is a Yonsei writer from Scarborough living with bipolar disorder. She is a graduate of UTSC Creative Writing and the University of Guelph’s MFA, and is currently completing an EdD in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. She was named Scarborough’s Emerging Writer of 2016 and was nominated for the Journey Prize in 2019. Her debut novel, Infinite Snails, will be published in 2022 by HarperCollins.