So we sit, as we do
every Tuesday, in chairs that are somehow
too deep, with the six feet
of professional distance
spread out on the rug before us.

How was your week?

Not great – I wring my hands – not great
I am not working as hard as I could be and
my sister won’t talk to me
and my mum has a cold and I’m terrified she’ll die
and I can’t sleep at night because I’m up at night tumbling into terror about our approaching climate catastrophe.

Usually, my therapist replies by listening quietly,
watching – not
saying much
until the inevitable twenty-minute deconstruction of my suffering at the end of the hour,
and sometimes,
if I am crying,
she will tell me that
nobody is going to die.
This time, she simply nods.