One-Way Session | Anne Whitehouse

                (in memory of Marc Snyder)

By the time we heard
your phone message
canceling our meeting,
you had died.

You were our therapist
for 25 years—
to think I still believed
we had all the time
in the world!

All the time
to resist and avoid
our most painful truths.

Only you had the ability
to turn our gazes inward
to reveal how we’d each
wronged the other.

You knew the worst about us
and liked us in spite of it.
I imagine speaking to you,
trying to hear your answer:

“He’s not asking
you to fix his problem,
but just to listen,
try and understand.”

From deep within
I feel the release from
that old way of being,

as if at last I swam out
from under the rock
that had trapped me,

and let myself be pulled
by a silken current
to those places
where we find each other
and hold on,

swaying with each other,
our grip loosening
and tightening and loosening
and tightening

like the way we love to float
in the sea, on our backs,
our legs entwined,
me inside my love,

the two of us warm
and steady, for this time,
now and forever,
between the two immensities.

Indian Literature Magazine | Poets and Poetry | Read poems by Anne Whitehouse on Indian Review. Visit the best Literature Magazine from Asia …