Dissociatus: 1982

Photo by Dawn Sanborn

Dissociatus: 1982

Woke this morning and shattered a bowl
before the cereal had even left the box.
Pieces scatter between nourishment and pain
finding their way into my skin...hands
touching, lifting, releasing what once was whole

relinquished now
as trash.

Slightly more than a quarter century before,
I left my body behind the same way,
mind dulled, memories fragmented
yet vivid, sharp, pointed, slicing me...
year
  after
     year.
Tip of the knife cut dreams,
not just skin. Tore away safety
instead of disconnecting muscle from bone.

I vacillate now between what I remember,
what I don't -- events flashed across a screen
that can't possibly still exist.
Images resembling myself, some embedded
as panic in my chest; others drenching me as nightmares,
replaying scenes of my life, with normalcy spliced in for effect.

I can't escape the porcelain seat
in a bathroom squeezed amidst the courtroom hall...
the one my arms rested upon as I gagged,
foolish enough to believe back then
...that everything was as it appeared:
...that janitors removed germs,
...that Honorable meant justice served,
...that crime was against a person, not the state.

And yet I crouch in the stall
tiny rabbit frozen in fear,

waiting

while the lawyers
work out deals
and plan golf games upon completion.

Perhaps that's what they preferred, lush greens
with only a ball to mark their place, for justice
demanded steps which could be tracked.
Click,
     Click,
          Click....upon the marbled floor,
dark as my assailant's hair. For a second
I want to flee; freed little bunny
tearing toward the 18th hole.

~~

Years later, I'd enter a bathroom
at a restaurant or shopping mall
and feel the urge to rip the toilet from the floor,
catapult it into the mirror
laughing as she did when the blade thrust into my back.
Memories chisel into the floor, into her,
torment and torture becoming an art form
jack hammering it all to hell,
for I wonder if that's where she eventually lands...
and I'm left with the mess I call myself.

As for the damage, I pick up the shards,
press them into my soul, stored as shiny icons,
senses triggered by courthouses and public bathrooms.

Michelle Fimon
©2011