“Why Won’t You Go to Counseling with Me?” (shorter version)
Because you’d rather get attention than get better.
Because you treat therapists like your personal assistants
and fire them when they won’t echo you. Case in point:
when I was sixteen, after you found a rum bottle
in my room, you pulled me out of History class
and dragged me to the Youth Services Bureau
where two social workers agreed with me when I said
that sometimes you were in my face talking nonsense
to start a fight, and at such times, a good idea
would be to take a timeout and head to opposite sides
of the house. When they sided with me on that one point,
you ran out of the room and down two flights of stairs,
said you were going to kill yourself, got into your shitty
Chevette, and peeled out of their gravel parking spot.
One social worker wrote down your license plate number
and the other grabbed my shoulders, looked me in the eye,
and said Whatever happens, I want you to know it’s not
your fault. Whatever. I returned her look and asked for
a ride to tennis practice and said my racquet was in the backseat
of your shitty Chevette. I knew that this made me look
heartless, but I didn’t have the words to explain that
about once a week you would say you were going to
kill yourself, but then you’d come home an hour or
two later with a car full of groceries, whistling.
11 thoughts on "“Why Won’t You Go to Counseling with Me?” (shorter version)"
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That last line hits so well. Thanks for sharing.
Wonderfully written. The narrative detail is fantastic. Thank you for sharing!
This story pulls in the reader and allows us to share the anger, and more.
Wow, Tom. You are mining this personal history with great skill. The poem makes me sad but also impressed by your resilience and your ability to transmute this dark stuff into poetic gold.
The narrative form sets the mood perfectly for this piece. The brutal honesty and the images lead us to that stellar last line. Another great write, Tom. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Phenomenal. Just phenomenal.
Thank you for this read.
Thanks for sharing this raw vulnerable stuff with such imagery and emotion. Poetry is therapy.
What a strong first line! I was engaged and on the edge of my seat til the end–which was fantastic!
Love this shorter version, well paced.
shows the seesawing in your life:
about once a week you would say you were going to
kill yourself, but then you’d come home an hour or
two later with a car full of groceries, whistling.
The catharsis is palpable in this one, justifiably angry and blunt words that needed to come out. Love it.
Wow, you made some great cuts. The sharp edges come through much more strongly here.