By Julian Matthews
Introducing a new series of poems by Julian Matthews. Julian is a writer and Pushcart-nominated poet published in The American Journal of Poetry, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Borderless Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Dream Catcher Magazine, Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The New Verse News, among others. He is a mixed-race minority from Malaysia and lived in Ipoh for seven years. Currently based in Petaling Jaya, he is a media trainer and consultant for senior management of multinationals on Effective Media Relations, Social Media and Crisis Communications. He was formerly a journalist with The Star and Nikkei Business Publications Inc
Link: https://linktr.ee/julianmatthews
It all starts the same/we try burying the shame/protecting it in a shell of denials/she cracks us open with the label “suicidal”/she pelts us with same-old, same-old/When did you first cut yourself, she asks/cajoles, prods, probes, b-o-r-i-n-g/she wants to uncover the inner loathing
Let the games begin/we recycle trigger and trauma/we tell her of shots fired without warning/
we tell her of the ocean nightmare/Again/she’s taking notes this time/we tell her the sea is green and brown and turgid/there are sea monsters and giant snakes and serpents/Isn’t that all the same animal? she asks/No, we say
We are a child, then an adult, then a child again/Does the whale appear again? she asks/We tell her, Yes/it always comes to the rescue at the very end/it has a box strapped to its back/we get in the box and we rise to the surface/but the box turns into a coffin, blocks its blowhole/and just before we reach the surface, looks at me/big teary eyes/knowing/we’re both drowning
Then we wake up, we say/She pushes the tissue box/the same one with tiny whales on it
in my direction/we are fine now, we say/too late/she ignores our protestations/the therapist, the fifth, checks the boxes of past sins/as always, the disorder is assigned/this time, apparently, it’s borderline
It all starts the same/trying to implant blame/we know how to play this game/it will all end the same/next time, we’ll give the whale a name
First published in Mental Health Volume 2, Poetry for Mental Health Book 5 in series, Norfolk, England, editor Robin Barratt, and available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/8u9qJsN
