Trauma

Like the thirty-eight dollar rondels at
Le Fromage Vert, Mom had a double-cream
illness — a paste of depression, tightly
waxed with a rind of mania. But fifty-four

years later, what remains are blurry mental
videos of her form, a sheer aqua nightgown
lying in puke and diarrhea — as if shot from
the last car of my bullet train of memory.

My wife says I’m less bruised than most old apples.

But doubt still sails my briny brain weekly,
and I can’t help but wonder if trauma
ever really heals, or just remains as hardened
layers of shellac on the interior walls of my skull.

My cell pings — a text from my youngest,
the neuroscientist.

Gary D. Grossman
Verse-Virtual August 2024