This is the way.

At a desk I sit, think, I think, of what is on my mind,

then use the tools taught to me in grade school.

Words that my mother taught me to understand stand out.

Hello in there, looking me in the eyes, us two, she holding my feet,

the sweet words were repeated many times each and every day,

my ears worked and my mind seemed to enjoy my mother's voice.

Other sounds, or even every other sound was in a class of their own,

or maybe my mother's voice was in a class by itself, any which away,

the day that she first raised her voice to me, or rather, the first time she ever did

was not so much for being naughty but for a self-inflicted injury, she screamed

and undressed me in front of everyone in the backyard, a bulkhead door splinter

had pierced and lodged itself in my butt cheek for all the world to see and hear about

and so it began, listening, not listening, tuning the volume down some how in my head.

The lesson had begun before that happened but that particular octave resonated,

it gave me the very opposite of a good feeling, inately,

instantly recognized that it was repellant to me, understood it as harm,

wanted and needed to turn away rather than understand hysteria's hold on mom,

eventually it all worked out, all of it, and it always does or doesn't it will anyway, work out.