The Inkblot

billboards, and grain silos, and promises sprayed like insecticide

Emotion is a betrayal of the mind,
the mind tells the couples therapist
in the hope that this confession might somehow
allow it to uncouple itself.

But emotion just scoots closer on the couch
and softly puts its calm, warm hand
on the mind’s twitching shoulder,
saying nothing, but feeling out loud,
so loudly that the couples therapist
shifts uneasily in her armchair.

The mind wonders if an inkblot test
might confuse emotion enough
to let it slip away, or if there is any amount
of magnetic resonance imaging
which might detect a fever,
the source of the infection,
or a timetable for the train we’re riding on.

But life keeps grinding on
past billboards, and grain silos,
and promises sprayed like insecticide,
which only serves to unmoor more
great clouds of emotion,
rising like inkblots over the fields,
tapping love poems against the glass
with pulvillied palms.

Emotion is a betrayal of the mind,
the couples therapist agrees meekly.
And how does that make you feel?
I hear her say as I reach for the window latch
and watch my mind open its mouth wide
to let the inkblot in.