CRITICA

My family all knew how to leave.
but going back –
where the mess is all too real, 
that was too jangling for them.

There has never been a back to go to, you said in our session.
To shift away from the reverberating loss
would mean looking away from the melancholic corner 
where I hide in the landscape painting by your window. 
You’re showing in order to not be seen.

If you put something down, if you let yourself be seen,
do you obscure other parts of the story–
the unfinished rhododendron painting paired with the good gold leaf frame
grandmama’s silver sea creature brooch with an amethyst eye,
her gold brocade cap sleeve jacket, the light glinting off her teeth.
The glamour obscures the sadness in my mom’s eyes but the tinkling of the piano as
twilight lights up the Queens necklace in the distance is still there for show.

Outside your window there’s a whole forest of dark green bamboo,
we once heard someone outside collecting the bamboo shoots.
It was a tentative but magical underworld land that gave us a respite.
How strong the pull to the water below, the call to the void. 
I am mesmerized by the other side. 

I want to know what is down there with you. 
You swam so far into the sparkling sea off our little curve of beach.
One time you swam too far out and came back in a fisherman’s small boat
with the imprint of a jellyfish on your whole back. 
You had to let the convulsions move through you.
Are you the evil sea goddess or a modern good, smiling
Witch who visits my dreams in the limousine in the clouds?

I remember lying down very pregnant on my side on the analytic couch,
I was like a scarab searching for the right spot to make a home.
You knew India, we had both spent our 26th year there.
You showed me your Ganesh and we talked about
Dumbo and his need for the feather.
You intimated that I didn’t need the feather 
and that maybe the ground was closer than I thought. 

On my walk to finally get out of the house I found the landscape in real time.
This time, my eye wanted to go up to the grey violet clouds even though
the air felt thick and dangerous and people avoided each other on the narrow path.
I found my rock with a view of the headlands and remembered that is where our steady one
gave her blessing to be North despite the recurrent undertow to return South.
I needed the solid container of analysis but always yearned for the familiar roller coaster of the blurry and harsh technicolor life.

Covid was a clash of worlds because now I was a part of the surreal screen.
Where did the doll go?
The ancestors like to play the game of lost and found to remind us they are here and
Benevolently guiding us forward.
Will the creative life bring back that loud roar 
they all got hooked on?
They found their drugs and were gone-
mine just happened to be people.

You can’t live at the carnival, you told me.
That has stayed with me.
Learning how to touch that but not get burned. 

And yet you also said, Maybe I was a potted plant, ready 
to be transplanted back in my native soil.
Could I be behind the camera now?