A love letter to my ex-psychoanalyst Anouchka Grose, whose outfits I very much enjoyed, and who sometimes stopped me from taking my own life, which would make this therapy rather than poetry regardless of how I dress it – there, I said it

I message you / the analyst I stopped seeing / I say ‘Hi many years ago you told me I should probably do something around writing / I eventually am / Wanted to say thankyou for that’ / And I send you the link to the reading / I send the same link on WhatsApp to my parents / to my siblings / I send it to my father’s email because / fathers / He wonders / the old schoolmaster / the old first mate / about the criteria for the black poets retreat / and I notice he uses / flexi / instead of / flexible / inferring an even less meaningful / even less rigorous sort of fit / I know what he means / he’s just calling me what I am / just a person without a place / a person without a people / and I wonder / what he would make / of my piece / about empire / but he is unable to make the reading / and I don’t send him the poem / although we do talk about African hair / and Brazilian slaves / and this is more than enough / for an email / Anouchka in our sessions you would / watch me cry / from time to time / fracturing / but you had never seen the films I mentioned / and I wondered if this was a lie / or perhaps a way to ensure / I explained myself properly / because how can you not have watched any of them? / there were easily hundreds / but / I message you / and you tell me / it makes you so happy / and I love you appropriately / for the work you did / I paid you / too little for / I love you / for telling it to me straight / even though this was against the rules / but mostly I love you / for when I read ‘So’ to you / my sorriest mess / ‘when the kids are more grown’ / I wrote / it was / the only time / you cried too / and only then I knew / that it was real / not just / some shit I was making up in my head / I was not alone / but I stopped seeing you / anyway / funny isn’t it? / and that’s the end