And in any other’s eyes she would disguise violent whispers
with captured promises… wait til I get you home.
Had I not been perfect? Had I said something wrong?
Yeah, right. Just my speed. And the hourglass bends
and time fades another day…
We can now add Kidney disease and shots in my eye
from the progressing diabetes from the PTSD.
And am I saying goodbye. Not sure.
Now was this a particular time with my mother or was
there a particular time. I can’t remember.
But in our house when I was 6 the door jam
to the front door held butter knifes from the
kitchen in the jam, out of our reach, to ensure the door staid shut.
The windows in the Northwest, downstairs, were
Picture Windows. And the sliding glass door held a nail in its path
at the top. I was hoping, perhaps, I could talk at the hospital to
a social worker if it happened. Was there a reason to fear that. Yes.
As an adult I had been told, by my mother,
that I had been in an accident when I was six.
Six years ago after they passed I started talking about my past
and one of the things I was told was… I’m a professional. We hear
stories of abuse. And what you are saying doesn’t match
the telling of an accident. A six-year-old child
simply doesn’t do those things in that way.
It was simple. They simply told me that a six-year-old would not have done
what I was told had happened.
And there are reasons. And I have told.
Now, Ski’s son had just died in a drowning accident in a pool and
6-year-old Bobby down in Tucson had just played the drums
for me to his new 45 of the Beatles, Help! Was that the reason? No.
Was it Disney? Was it?
Perhaps, I had thought if they did it, it would make me a better soldier?
Like my GI Joe Men and their Jeeps and Bridges.
Or my GI Joe Astronauts and Lunar Walker.
That it would get me past the door to a social worker.
That I’d always instinctively remember where the doors were.
My mom stopped on the way to the ER at her doctor’s office
for a tranquilizer for herself. They at first had gone the wrong
way to Sacred Heart.
In the ER they did not have time to put me under, they couldn’t
and the head injury made them afraid that I would slip into a coma.
I laid there still while they worked on my face. They brought me
to a social worker. And I believe she
brought me to the FBI, to the man out of Seattle who
provided my father’s security clearance.
September 