At the end of analysis you should face your analyst.
It’s recommended that you enjoy a lengthy goodbye.
You’ve spent a long time together.
After years pinned to that couch, staring at that painting,
the old man of the sea will yield his true form.
For example: a slender gay man in his late thirties,
clean-smelling and bald, his anonymous sky-blue tie
and fitted slacks, like a holidaying uncle
in a French Impressionist painting, except
instead of the Rhine it’s the Ohio.
The spell is broken. You can see him now—
around town, maybe, or driving home behind you
in his Honda Civic, which he’s always done,
but which you’ve never noticed.
Imagine you’ve entered the painting.
It’s midnight, you’ve got him pinned. His colony of seals
sleep piled like slipper shells. You can ask him anything.
He’s no longer slippery. Who am I? Can I love? Am I real?
The hero’s question is always what’s holding me back.
It implies something went wrong and can be made right.
That the past continues to operate, that there is disorder.
And that there is disorder is predicated upon a prior state
of greater order. Once he commented on your slovenly appearance.
Once you went back for something. A question maybe.
You knocked. A no-no. He wasn’t all yours.
Having seen your old man in you, having seen you weren’t all hers,
your mother asked and asked, what happened to the old you?
I don’t know, you’d say, squirming away. Or, nothing.
What happened to your mother? the physician on call after hours
working on her asked wearily, befuddled from behind his glasses.
Knowledge and propitiation are demanded of the hero.
Where are you getting this? Your Latin teacher?
What about you? your analyst asked. Maybe you’re in love with me.
Suppose you were supposed to say no. What happened
to the old you? She didn’t mean you, maybe, so much as herself.
The one she wanted back. The one you never knew.
Is that what you went back for? Because nobody ever told you?
Your mother’s very sick, the physician on call had said.
Meaning dead. You gave it till the end of the week.
from Door to Remain (UNT Press, 2022)
