[POETRY]

[05/08/2026]

My Therapist’s Bathroom

by Emily Woods

both bottoms of my thrift store adidas were caked with mud and when the rubber sole on the left shoe started peeling away i patched it up with heavy duty duct tape. 

habits were expensive. 

my dealer’s name was oh glizzy. 

he had a burgeoning rap career, 14k followers and a gaggle of boys in bape hoodies drifting behind him like satellites everywhere he went. 

oh glizzy’s voice was often the first in my ears on any given day. he grew impatient when i wouldn’t buy in bulk. 

no more dubs plz! 

i thought the inclusion of plz was polite. 

yo u good 

i’d send off. muscle memory. sometimes my text bubbles to him were green and sometimes blue. i tried not to read too much into it. 

u kno it. wya? i’ll pull up 

i followed him on soundcloud. 

oh for real? 

he said when i told him, blushing. 

bet imma follow you back 

i recommended his services.

now oh glizzy has 1.5 million, a blue check and headlines coachella. i only see him in my feed, clutching bricks of cash. his captions are wholesome. 

he loves his kid, his girl, his mom. 

he thanks god. 

he made it. 

i sink into the summer 

of selling my bitcoin prematurely. 

his song blares on the radio, 

i swear i hear him pulling 

into my driveway with a dimebag. 

his face on a billboard. 

once in therapy i excused myself, locked the bathroom door and railed a line off the front of my cracked iphone 6 while the sink ran. eucalyptus soap and warm fluorescent light. 

i rinsed my nose, went back out and told her i’d been thinking about boundaries.

EMILY WOODS is a writer and former SoundCloud rapper from Virginia currently living in Los Angeles. She co-produces a new script reading series called  OFFSCREEN with her friends.