Breakthrough
No one called him Richard ever,
never called him anything,
could not even remember him,
but, then, he could not
say himself who he was
or what he wanted,
only that he did not want
to be who and what he was.
For an hour each week
he was mine, a case study
I would write
after I heard him out.
"Richard," I asked,
"what happened today?"
"Not much," he said.
"I punched out my boss
when he docked me one hour,
as if he had the right
to clock my life.
Who does he think he is?"
"And who are you?"
I had the answer
written in the chart,
the diagnosis
of this man named Richard
who never had a father,
who was passed from place
to place and acted out
or acted in. He was lost
and no one cared but him
and me, of course.
Last week, Richard dreamed.
"In my nightmare, I was buried
alive in wet cement
that hardened, gave me shape.
I punched my concrete shell
until it cracked.
Then I could breathe again."
I, too, have had that dream
many times. I need Richard
to tell me how
he inhales and exhales
when the world is too much
with him, with all of us.
Carol Carpenter’s poems and stories have appeared in numerous online and print publications, including: Connecticut Review, Snake Nation Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Georgetown Review, Caveat Lector, Orbis, Arabesques Review, and various anthologies, the most recent are Not What I Expected (Paycock Press, 2007) and A Walk Through My Garden (Outrider Press, 2007). Her work has been exhibited by art galleries and produced as podcasts (Connecticut Review and Bound Off). She received the Richard Eberhart Prize for Poetry, the Jean Siegel Pearson Poetry Award, Artists Among Us Award and others. Formerly a college writing instructor, journalist and trainer, she now writes full time in Livonia, Michigan.