Therapy

Group Therapy

We gather each day in this circle, I know everyone’s slippers by heart.

The liturgy of tartan, fluffy and sheepskin, begins with confession,

a suitcase of letters and cards she never opened, the child she

abandoned, his lost dream of seeing elephants in Africa. They offer

losses like chocolates. I suck on the hard centre of her accident,

swallow it whole, wanting to cry a tsunami of tears to wash it away.

I don’t, but he does, weeps like the child they never wanted,

utters his unspeakable nickname, how his stomach was broken by boots,

word, flesh and blood become one. A mother-shaped hole in the room

gapes in the elusive light of winter sun, but no mother moves to fill it.

We breathe, simple as trees, but not as useful, as our father, the nurse

passes the cup with our pills, pierces the blue brocade of our arms.

He stinks of the smoking we’re not allowed to do, his inspiration.

She starts humming the tune called Slane. He says, Shut up will you,

this isn’t church, you know. Except it is, I want to say but I’m the one

who never speaks. Be Thou My Vision sounds in the chapel of my head,

one of my hands comforts the other as words fly away, try to escape,

rise up and beat their wings like doves against the locked windows.

Victoria Field