Nancy Scott McBride’s most recent poem to appear here was “Making Music, Not War” (December 2017)

Therapy
For Ann Tate
By Nancy Scott McBride

How did it happen, the breakdown?
Did it tip-toe in like a thief in the night
to quietly steal away the best parts of her?
Or did it blow in like a mid-western twister,
laying waste to everything in its path?
She doesn’t remember.
All she knows is that whatever it was and
however it arrived, it left behind the wreck
of a once-functional woman whose
tears are so many and so often, they
threaten to drown the ones who care.

Once a week she visits a wise-woman
who listens to her talk about her
sad childhood and wild teen years;
about her bad marriage and messy divorce,
her fears and failings as a parent.
The wise-woman hears her talk about all the
ways over all the years that you can lose
something, someone, yourself.
Then she says a lovely thing about
fresh starts, second chances, even rebirth.
With hard work, enough time and a little luck,
her patient may, like the phoenix bird,
rise from the ashes of her old life and begin anew.
The person she becomes, unlike her former self,
won’t be the product of others’ dreams and desires,
but simply, gloriously and unapologetically herself.