My bug phobia keeps me from identifying
species. I’m not sure that it’s a clinical phobia.
But my bipolar, that is clinical and raw. Yes. Both.
I can’t let it get to me when the white girl at work
makes a half-joke about Mexicans—it’s okay,
she’s from San Antonio—or when my daily
lathering of testosterone gel is slowly digging
my grave, one shovelful a day, one shovelful
away from—I shocked myself when I killed
a gnat with my own small hand. I left its body
on my desk, can never bring myself to touch.