Poem Ending with a Line from Good Will Hunting
Dissociation from complex trauma means
I can have the home I always dreamed of
and the family I always dreamed of,
a wife of thirty years who loves me
four young adult kids who love me
and even their friends love me
as they say that their dads are assholes
who hit them yell at them scare them,
and we can watch a movie in my basement
my favorite place, my safe space,
but trying to stay here is like trying
to keep listening to a radio station
as you drive out of town and through a tunnel
and the tunnel is as dark as a magic hat
with all the magic suctioned out
or maybe it’s black magic because
on the other side of the tunnel
somehow I’m in another car forty years ago
and the driver is mad in both senses of the word.
She says she doesn’t like my attitude, she says.
I need to straighten up, she says
She speeds through a red light
and weaves through traffic.
She says she has half a mind
to drive into a wall, end it all
for both of us and it’s all my fault.
It’s all my fault.
Meanwhile in my basement someone
shakes a bowl of popcorn in front of my face
and my hand reaches for some
and stuffs it in my mouth
but I’m not really there
and after the movie my son wants me
to get to know his new girlfriend.
She’s lovely and he’s smitten with her.
I smile and look super chill.
I learned to look like that
because you don’t let your abuser know
she’s hurt you.
You make your face look super chill
until it freezes like that,
so I look fine but I’m not
really there. I’m in a darker place
than any home theater
or any home or any theater
should ever be, and since this
is my poem I can make anything
I want happen in it, and what I want
Is for Robin Williams to unhang himself
and look me in the eye and say
It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.
