“I don’t know where I saw more dead bodies,
In my job, or my childhood—
But I wouldn't call it traumatic.”
He is strong. Always finds a way
to minimize what his body knew was danger.
“The storm was more like an adventure,” he says,
Fingers tracing the shape of eight neighbors braced in a bathroom,
hands against an about-to-fail wall (flexing like a tiled lung).
“Some people had it worse,” he says,
Re-watching a man baseball-batted off the road, bleeding out,
or stolen bodies emerging from dark salty holes. The smell...
“I was too busy being mad to be messed up,” he says,
Re-shouting at a shadow “Get off!!” and brandishing a knife,
Dodging a knife, screaming alone in the dark at a knife.
“Maybe I deserved it,” he says,
Taking a cold-pack off his chest, holding out hands like
The weight is still a loaded gun someone placed there—as a dare—
That years later he snuck in our house, lifted, fought to keep by his head. “Give it back!”
“Maybe I’m just crazy, damaged now—a piece of shit.”
He says, balling up on the floor shaking-crying
because I turned out the lights without helping him to bed,
or fell asleep in the middle of telling him over and over
“I am not leaving” and yes, “I still love you, I still love you.”
“I hate that I’m doing this to you.”
He says, looking at me with blue sparkling eyes,
while the sky turns quiet—looking past me, down debris-filled streets...
his bruised palms and dented walls,
lumped forehead and clumps of hair...
He doesn't know if now is the eye of the storm
or a safe, long rest until the next one.
Even though
He is the storm.
The ethical challenge of publishing poems about shared realities:
ReplyDeleteLife is hard ~ for some people that's relatively safe and privileged, for others it's legitimately dangerous and brutal, but it's never just simple and effortless to to exist in this world. It's hard. And we all go through that hardness partially alone and partially together.
The parts that people struggle through alone, inside of ourselves, can feel isolating and dispiriting: like, "Am I weak? Am I broken? Am I the only one struggling like this?" So my primary goal when creating fictionalized versions/blends of stories from my life, the paper, Reddit, documentaries, the people around me, etc... is to capture the the inside-part of these human experiences in a way that gives others a feeling of being seen and understood and *belonging* in the world. Not weak, not senseless, not a monster ~ vulnerable, complex, human.
At the same time, other people's stories are their own to tell. And that gets muddy when my life and someone else's overlap deeply. How do I tell my story of struggling as a close ally during someone else's struggle, without also describing elements of their experience? How do I describe those elements that impacted me, while also respecting their desire for privacy and anonymity?
A friend reached out to me about this poem ~ someone who knew everyone involved in this story, and told me that the poem included details that could make it too easy for someone to read this and trace back those elements to specific people.
And they were right. I re-read it, re-wrote it, and I hope that now the story focuses with honesty on the part of my experience that I find value in sharing (loving and admiring the strength of those wrestling with the scars of past trauma; how easy it is to become part of that cycle with them) while at the same time affording those others a respectful level of anonymity and privacy.
I default to being an open book about my life, and I hope that this re-write walks that line of my sharing and others' anonymity in a respectful way.