—A SALVATION ARMY BAND PLAYED, AND THE CHILDREN DRANK LEMONADE, AND THE MORNING LASTED ALL DAY

 

 

In Therapy

 

I cried the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian and 

Dead Sea, and felt ashamed.

I cried until the whole world was smears 

and nothing mattered but the soothing taste of water

trickling like wet worms down my throat.

My mother said the world would end with me, 

but she was a pathological liar so her 

words often flipped off my shoulder like false regrets.

On that day, robins slammed into the windows and 

starlings dropped from the sky, already dead and featherless.

Armageddon didn’t make any more sense to me than 

being a bastard child, but I clung to the rail nonetheless. 

Jesus is coming, I heard my mother say, right before 

she raised the belt over her shoulder like an Olympian.

“Why does any of this matter now?” the therapist asked sincerely.

In front of me, the clock stitched backwards, the hands 

twirling like a junkie that had done far too much cocaine.

I wanted to answer, but there wasn’t a suitable one to be found and so he said, “Doesn’t matter anyway, our time’s up now.”

Rising from his chair, he pointed toward the door I left through, 

ghost of a man-boy, floating into one world, that one, and the next.