KID GLOVES
We decide I’m making progress because I report crying less often at
inopportune times.
We talk about a paper bag. On the outside of the bag is everything I’m
fine with every person in the world knowing about me. She gives
examples: You are sporty, you dislike gelatinous foods, you have two
brothers and a single pet.
Inside the bag are things I keep for just my most trusted friends and loved
ones. I am to think of these myself:
I like to gossip, a little unkindly.
I see a therapist two times a week, just to keep the proverbial
wheels on the proverbial bus.
My former boyfriend died and now he is, for all intents and
purposes, forever dead.
This is an exercise for children, but to me it is profound.
Week after week, we check in about the bag. Dr. Kate asks me to share
inside-bag things I have revealed to outside-bag people. We find that I do
it when I’m feeling ashamed or embarrassed, or to compensate for acting
weird. This is a lot of the time.
I call it my seasickness. She sees it differently. We agree to add
“boundaries” to the list of what I lost.
[sic]
A brain that experiences a New Bad Thing contorts itself to insulate from
Future Similar Bad Things.
Never again shall you catch me unawares, the brain whispers menacingly
to the gut.
A brain bent out of shape creates Ruminating Thoughts—unhelpful,
round-the-clock, no-good-very-bad thoughts I have coddled and
indulged, spoon-fed with airplane sounds. It’s time to put these thoughts
to bed.
(What if somebody could have saved you.)
(What if it could have been me.)
Leigh Lucas is a writer in San Francisco. Her chapbook Landsickness (Tupelo Press, 2024) was selected by Chen Chen for the 2023 Sunken Garden Poetry Chapbook Award. She has been awarded residencies at Tin House, Community of Writers, and Kenyon, and has been recognized with AWP’s Kurt Brown Prize, as well as with a Best New Poet nomination, Best of Net nomination, and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Leigh’s poems can be found in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Alta Journal, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from Stanford and an MFA from Warren Wilson.