The Beginning, or I'll Think of a More Creative Title Later

Here are the first six poems of my thesis! I would also like to note, in the most un-narcissistic way possible, that my poem "Axis I: Panic" was published in The Healing Muse, an annual journal published by SUNY Upstate Medical University. Click the link to learn more about the publication - it's very unique and it's a cause I fully support.


February 12, 1988

I was born
a month before
I should have been,
the only time I’ve ever been early
for anything.


Life According to Walt Disney

It’s hard not to wonder what she’s going to be like when she’s older,
the little girl who cried so hard during the credits of The Little Mermaidher face turned the color of Ariel’s hair.

Sobbing into the couch cushions, she can see it,
can see herself having to choose:
Love or her voice?Who’s going to play the octopus who steals everything she is?
Who will play the prince who loves everything she isn’t?

She gazes at the TV screen in wonder and can’t believe Ariel made the wrong choice –
How could she have left all of her friends in the ocean just to be with him? –
Life as a woman with legs is apparently going to be long and unpleasant.
I’m part of that world, she realizes at age three, and the seaweed isn’t looking very green.

A Calculated Move
There is not a single word
I don’t know how to spell,
so to find my weekly spelling words,
my teacher lets me flip through a dictionary
until I find something I don’t recognize.

I’ve never seen calculatedly before,
so for homework I write it out five times:
Calculatedly
calculatedly
CALCULATEDLY
CaLcUlAtEdLy
CALculATEdly.

When my teacher quizzes me, I spell it
perfectly.
I can’t work with the other kids on my spelling words
because they can’t read words that big, so
Mrs. R. is always my spelling partner.

It’s no wonder, then,
that two months later she notices
I’m having trouble making friends
and suggests I pick two girls to take
to the guidance counselor with me
each week to play games.
Spelling words never were great conversation starters.

At the end of the year,
those two girls are only kind of my friends
and I have no idea what calculatedly means.

Axis I: Panic

The air in the house smells like smoke.
It’s summer and the neighbors barbeque every night;
charcoal wafts through the windows while
hamburgers come in through the open door.
All I can smell is burning.
I’ve seen fires on television,
destroying houses and families and everything in between.
The air in the house smells like smoke.
I cover my ears, anticipating the fire alarm’s blaring.
Its red light stares back at me, one bloodshot eye,
taunting. It’s going to go off, loud and sharp, and
we won’t have enough time to take everything
we need from the house
before it’s nothing but heat and flames.
We are going to be destroyed,
our house and us and everything in between.

It appears that Anna is having panic attacks,which are recurrent and unexpected discrete periods of intense fear and discomfort

There are too many words, too many feelings –
Am I hot? I think it must be hotter than it was
a moment ago –
Was that haze in the air there before?
Is it dust? Is it smoke? It’s smoke, it must be.
FIRE.
There are too many words, too many feelings
I have
To
Scream!
FIRE!

which reach their peak within minutes and last for minutes.

I think my parents are in the room but I can hardly see them
anymore, through the cloud of smoke and fear.
They’re talking, but between the pounding in my temples and
the smoke alarm which must be ringing by now,
I barely hear them.
“Calm down, we’re safe, there’s no fire.
Stop screaming.”
I can’t stop. Screaming is all I have now.
My tears taste like burnt ashes.

Anna has more than the required four symptoms to meet diagnostic criteria.

I feel my heart everywhere in my body;
my pulse is everywhere and nowhere –
I am more alive than I have ever been but
I am dead to all hearing. My reason is all burned up.
I can’t breathe. Have I been inhaling smoke? I can’t breathe,
and I might throw up.
The back of my neck feels hot; I can imagine it searing red, singed by flame.
Somewhere there is a fire, and
it is burning me alive.

At the present time, it appears that the panic attacks represent Panic Disorder without Agoraphobia.

(It is also possible that these symptoms of anxiety are occurring within the context of a general medical condition. The fact that Anna has smelled smoke when no one else does, is a concern. It will be important to rule out a subclinical Seizure Disorder.)

I spend three hours with a neurologist.
After my trial by fire,
he says I’m normal.

Anna appears to be an intense child who feels deeply and thinks at a level which is advanced for her chronological age.

I think too much.
My brain is too big for my heart and
my heart is too big for my little body.
There’s too much furniture in
this tiny house.

Her cognitive development may surpass her emotional development, creating chronic tension.

I’m going to burn out.

It is possible that Anna may have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorderas well as Anxiety Disorder(s).

This isn’t even the tip of the flame.
It’s only the beginning.


The Closet

It’s almost a relief when we get to Truth or Dare
at sleepovers. It’s easier this way,
not having to dread the inevitable. I hate playing,
but I hate waiting to play even more.

It’s the same question every time, worded differently.
Asking which boy I’d want to marry
is the same as asking who I think is cutest
or who I wish I could kiss.

I don’t want to kiss any of them.
Just the thought makes me gag.
I don’t say so.

Instead I decide on Charlie because he isn’t hideous,
Dan because he’s nice and has big eyes,
Nick because he makes me laugh,
Alexander because he’s already my friend anyway,
Pat because other girls seem to like him.

I don’t get what I’m supposed to see in them.
I don’t say so.

By the time I get married I’ll hopefully have figured it out.


Axis II: Deferral

The woman is like a hyena,
ready to pounce on me and devour
anything she can.
I can see her haunches as she sits
in her chair. She sits in a soft leather chair
with armrests and a cushioned back.
I sit in a stiff wooden one that never quite
holds my body the right way.

I can’t help but fidget.

Both eyes focused on me like
cat eyes on its prey,
she says I have Attention Deficit Disorder.

On Axis II, a diagnosis is deferred.

By age twelve, I’m given
Attention Deficit Disorder,
Generalized Anxiety Disorder,
Panic Disorder,
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,
and occurrences of Depression.

She hands out diagnoses like candy
and I eat them up, desperate for answers
and someone who seems to understand.

Still, she watches and waits,
waits for me to slip
so she can draw back on those cat haunches,
lunge, pounce, and ravenously tear apart
my character so she can stick me
with a personality disorder.

Even though I nearly shatter
under the weight of her gaze
and even though I nearly burn up
from the rapid fire of her questioning,
I never falter, not once. Not ever.

On Axis II, a diagnosis is deferred.