Doctor Storm
I am here because I can’t sleep when it’s dark, / maybe in an hour I will be tired.
Cold-sweat-palms on eggshell-coloured leatherette,
sixty minutes is a long time to peel away trauma.
I am here because I can’t sleep when it’s dark,
maybe in an hour I will be tired.
I am here because the monsters strangle me at drowsy sunrise.
Maybe in a week I will sleep a few hours at night.
Storm faces me, his eyes prick my hippocampus-shell:
why is it that girls are brought up to be pleasing,
he pierces the yolk pooling in the basement of the amygdala,
where father-mother-child are scrambled, some leaking liquid.
Maybe in a month I will no longer dream.
I am here because my body simulates death during class.
Storm blows a hole into my boiled brain, and then it settles
into mother-father-child, swinging pigtails on the seesaw.
Why is it that some brains are capable of Stockholm syndrome,
while others grow fear into fangs?
The clock stops: fingers wriggle towards the sky, feet touch ground.
I say: maybe in a year I will dream again.'
Christina Hennemann is a poet and prose writer based in Ireland. Her debut poetry pamphlet was published by Sunday Mornings at the River in 2022. She won the Luain Press Poetry Competition, was shortlisted in the Anthology Poetry Award and longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. Her work appears in fifth wheel, Ink Sweat & Tears, Moria, Anti-Heroin Chic, National Poetry Month Canada, Livina, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a full-length poetry collection. www.christinahennemann.com
