(Psychiatrist: So do you rage and scream your anger and disappointment or show your joy so others know what’s going on with you?

 

Patient: Only when I write)

 

She swallows hard, stony phrases

knotting in her throat at someone’s cruel barbs.

Bracing at the shoulders, she tilts her head  away,

stifling  her protest behind a thinning smile.

She turns away from yet another face

receding in a line of grimness.

But none of it is worth the fight.

Along the bougainvillea path,

she turns to watch a yellow bird, a stream of water

whispering on the hillside.

She turns to share  the moment, forgetting no-one is there.

 

The sag across her shoulders goes unseen.

A sleepless cold stalks her day and night,

shadowing the silence where she lives.

Melodies she might have sung,

words she could have blasted out

keep buzzing in her head, prickling her hair.

 

At night, a gray rectangle lies in waiting

till she keys in the day’s unfinished business.

Her fingers and the letters eke out lines and images

that float from where she buried them all day.

The pages filled, she quickens at the sight

of what stares back—shudders at this

contretemps between her and the keyboard 

quaking at the storm of words they spawned:

this bane, this balm, this other self, that’s free

and freeing, although it startles her with truths

she never wants to stare her in the face!

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