My dad still talks about the time my mom
called our first color TV “the idiot box,”
and smashed it with a hammer.  

My therapist helps me see that Mom
envied the TV because she wanted
to be the center of attention.  

People with personality disorders get stuck
emotionally at age two or three, my therapist says,
and you don’t let a crazy person control you  

any more than you’d give in to a toddler’s tantrums,
which reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode
I saw on that old idiot box:  

Little Anthony develops god-like powers
but behaves like a devil. He can read
minds so when he makes and kills  

a three-headed guinea pig, everyone has to say,
“That’s real good. It’s real good you done that.”
When Anthony wishes his playmates away  

into a cornfield, everyone left says “Good,
real good.” When he sets a man on fire,
“It’s a real good thing, a real good thing.”  

But then Dan Hollis drinks some whiskey, sings
“Happy Birthday” to himself, stealing Anthony’s
thunder, and Anthony turns him into a jack-in-the-box,  

and “It’s good. It’s real good you done that.”
Surely Dan Hollis felt boxed in long before that,
and maybe it felt good to spring out of the box.  

That same year, in school, we made clay pots,
and when I got sent to the principal for smashing mine,
I said I made it and should be allowed to break it.  

I think of my sisters and myself as clay pots
that my mom made, and broke, and glued
back together and shelved to take down  

when she felt lonely for playmates, and I drink
in my therapist’s words like whiskey from a jar,
and Banish me to the cornfield, Anthony,  

if you must. I’ve got to get out of this box.