GROUP THERAPY AS PHANTASMAGORIA 

 

I believed fear was a flat plain uncertain endlessly

Until the day we watched Arienne weep 

Silently like an animal domestic and hurting

In a sterile room about to die.

On this fourth day of hers without sleep 

Her one eye is bloodshot and shaking

The other glass inputted after a trauma. 

It is perfect, white and blue and promising.

My trepidated ghost peels away from me entranced

As Arienne’s afterward whispering saying 

So much blood and Not even really pain but

Surprise followed by a convulsion of realization, you know. 

Like we were familiar. Arienne in tears says All she has 

Now is insomnia. The therapist asks Did this experience 

Not leave fear? And we other patients enter a bacchanalian reverie

From which we will never again withdraw.

With all sharps confiscated my ghost is unarmed

Takes its own clouded fingers into reddened second socket

Of our Arienne. Pulls as if heartstrings. 

Eye melts to loose muscle in the hospital room. 

Sloughs to the floor a mass of shivering bloodmeat.

Tense and pulsing like ready to kill. Writhing

Atop our orange plastic chairs arranged in cold circle 

We are dancing in our own crazed faerie ring we do not notice her

Leg twitching finger tapping hurried state.

What is already dead comes back to haunt 

In the same breath which Arienne takes to

Mute herself with a sigh. The deflation

Echoes within herself, beacon of vacancy. 

Finally blue, barren. Cleaned. Hospitable.

She pauses here as if to soothe us.

Our organs spastic and undone.