Loving The Traumatized Teen While She's Acting Out
       

Before our children's birthday parties, we determined
to keep putting our breaths into balloons
until we ran out of breath or out of balloons.

Our daughter's therapist says soldiers
learn to survive by pouring warpaint
all over their souls, but then they bring the fight
home and scare their families, by which she means
that while lying and sneaking may have helped
our daughter stay in foster homes longer,
now that she's allowed to date, she doesn't need
to invite boyfriends to the hotel where she works
as a housekeeper so they can have more privacy.

My wife's voice sounds like cake mix smells,
but I know she's just a flicker
like an empire or a firefly.
Best not to think too hard about that
or whether our souls, after leaving
our bodies, wander like lost children.
Donne said that no man is an island,
but he didn't say no woman is. My wife
might be Bora Bora and I might be a shipwreck.
By which I mean I'm sorry I'm not a better husband.

Our daughter's therapist wants her to revisit a memory
of her birth father's hands in her pants but that's
like asking a dot to revisit Pacman.
Our daughter wants to marry a childhood memory
of running barefoot in the rain, but that memory
is holding hands with a suppressed memory of her
birth mother's mouth wrapped around a crack pipe.
I don't want to walk my daughter down that burning aisle.
By which I mean I'm sorry I'm not a better father.

I feel like a toner cartridge running out of ink.
I feel like the actor who plays the gravedigger
in every drama about soldiers. Forget it.
I'm grappling like the junior varsity wrestler I once was.
By which I mean I wish I were a better poet.
By which I mean that none of these words touch what I really feel.
By which I mean deep sadness and a sense of failure
stronger than the sense of sight and the sense of smell combined.

Tweet
Copyright © 2022 Tom C. Hunley All rights reserved
from Gargoyle
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission