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A THERAPIST MEETS A FORMER PATIENT

 

The secrets of others live young and fresh,

Spring forth after twenty criss-crossed years. 

I meet her pounding away on the elliptical

In my gym, back in town for Christmas.

Sudden smiles, adult handshake, her words

Tumble, “I remember going out to your office”                                                                                  

And “I survived my adolescence.” 

Behind the steel machines there is all

She doesn’t say and I don’t say but both

Of us remember clearly, these things peep out

And wish to not be called.  As I

Protect the confidentiality

Of anyone I protect her from

Herself and she colludes with my collusion. 

Millions of separate moments gone as burned

up leaves, but the secrets bright and green. 

 

Pictures of her children on her phone,

The tolerable routine commuting

On the Metro, “I turned out fairly

Normal.”  She feels an impulse to fill me in

On the unsaid-to-anyone, the

Affair perhaps or her mother’s

Suicide attempt or the wish to run

Further away than this from home

 – Or none of this.  Whatever it might be

It turns back from the brink of saying,

More smiles Goodbye Goodbye.  Secrets tender

As the smiles of children settle in

A place in the elliptic of a poem.

 

 

 

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