Content Warnings: bipolar disorder, mania, spiritual abuse, medical ableism

i am doing so much to keep it together. you know my blood pressure is on the high range of normal and you know i take after my father. prefer to let life wash over me like the tides raised by global warming i do not know why you keep insisting it’s only a blood draw comprehensive vampire sucking my vitality vivacious afab body vexed poxxed skin i am doing so much to stay on top of my medicine one pill of lithium in the morning another in the evening with latuda and three-hundred-fifty calories of food and i am doing so much in telling you time and time again that essential oils and homeopathic remedies do not work on this chemically combustible mind my neurons don’t work that way have you seen me manic? do you think it’s something you can just pray away?

Rayne Alarcio (he/they) is a Filipino American transmasculine poet from Los Angeles. Their work appears in or is forthcoming in Chicago Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, failbetter, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. They are the author of the chapbook Starving the Wolf (Bottlecap Press), housed in the Poets House Permanent Collection.

Twitter: @raynealarcio
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Threads: @raynealarcio
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Website: raynealarcio.com