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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