It wasn’t quite like the ripples
that surface on a glass pond
as the rock skitters across,
but it might have been
something like that.
Paid leave were the words,
therapy was their direction,
words were the infraction,
nothing more
than
words,
but that’s not what they said!
It was obvious they saw the stone
skipping across hard asphalt
and chipping away
at a polished surface,
something time worked at,
perfected.
Flecks hid under cars and
slipped through sewer grates,
scratching,
sullying
and maiming the stone.
He was crossed legs
and paper and pencil on his lap.
His office was a leather couch
and a chair in the corner
if you didn’t want to be cliché.
He wanted to know how I was,
where I grew up
and what my parents did.
He couldn’t hide wanting to know
how school was,
did I like my students
and the courses I taught?
It sat there just
broken,
shattered,
vulnerable,
ever exposed to
the light of day,
waiting for people
to stop and examine it
or pass it by
because it was of no need.
Mostly,
he wanted to know if I was happy.
I asked him if he knew why I was here,
maybe turning the table.
He nodded
and asked if I ever had feelings like that.
I just laughed
because it was a question
that anyone who knew me
would scoff at
and it seemed right
that I should too.
The jagged edges,
the surface no longer smoothed by a river
or polished day after day,
were exposed.
A hand might go to collect
them up and catch a sharpened point,
something they weren’t ready for,
something that wasn’t there last time.
I left feeling nothing was resolved.
Did anything need to be fixed,
uncovered?
I marked the session off
knowing I just had to go
until I met the quota,
the number that said
I’m OK.
Still, a part of me wants to know
what they saw,
how a few words
spun their minds,
turning my smile
around,
like they were just now
seeing me for who I was.
Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee and regular contributor for Fevers of the Mind with words in 50+ lit mags, 100+ accepted pieces and a debut collection with Alien Buddha Press called Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities on Amazon. http://linktr.ee/McGuirkMatthew Twitter: @McguirkMatthew Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.
Punk Noir Magazine 
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