The Therapist Gets An Eye Test

The Therapist Gets An Eye Test

The circumference of his face
hung like one of saturn’s moons
blurry in the middle-distance
of the two-metre square dimly lit room.

“Look towards me and follow the tiny light”
he spins her gently to the right – swoooooosh
“look up to the ceiling and down to the floor”
rolls himself in apparatus cupping her chin

and their knees come together like scissors.
Proximity Distance Boundaries
things she calculates daily with
verb tense form of address

he has no regard for. She hangs
perpendicular to the chair symmetrical
as a split pear. “The coloured lights
the red and the green the two circles –

which is easiest to see?” She blinks
then blurts “The red?” schlott
a lens is dropped “And now?”
“The green – no still the red” – she’s lost

Schlott “And now?” The lines shudder
as if an earthquake or a tremor
hit the room – years and years
of looking into things but never

have things appeared this unclear.
She squints stares stabs out “The Green!”
but he sees through her empathetic manoeuvre
“No no Miss Harrison it’s what YOU see.

Try again – the red or the green?”