Theodore

At the therapist's
you say,
It is not he who speaks,
Nicholas,
it is his altered self.
Believe me,
I know him well.

I notice three lamps, light
forming pleats around their porcelain legs,
and listen
to the cadence of our breaths.

He asks me,
Do you agree, Tom?

I say,
Yes,
mostly
to appease your make-believe.

With the passage of evening,
I think more about
the altered self, and
the voices of dissonance
that hang above us
like an umbrella, bent
with the weight of discomfort.

I name him Theodore.
And we are brothers, he
born of delirium
in the belly of my sub-conscience.

His voice feels heavy
like a fulcrum
of dark misgivings.
His nails, like shells
of dangerous longings.
His teeth, like bullets
of hardened sorrow.
His arteries, a venue
where sustained moans
of a fevered brain boom
with theatrical acoustics.

Most often he is calm,
like an ocean of wild veronicas
over which a breeze whistles
at the peak of summertime,
and at peace with my other self,
sleeping in the caves
of my minds utmost imaginings.

But it is the stimulus of an argument,
the battery of your confrontation,
that cause my voice of temper, my
altered self Theodore,
to curdle out
of my blood's dissolution;
morph into a venomous snake
and strike you -invoke
your insecurities,
cause waves of water
over the ridges of your eyes,
beat your voice of reason
with a destructive hammer.

Perhaps it is this need
to bring at peace my duet of selves,
that I seek to address at therapy.
And for you,
to meet my other half,
my bone whisperer,
my elderflower,
my heart's shapeless twin.