Poetry By Michael DuBon

 John Buie CC




My Beige Healing Journey 

I feel a rattling in the beige counseling office,  
a mid 30s sneeze that shakes
my bones, throws out my back, with the 
whipcrack of a rib breaking, a disc slipping 
along an electric slide. 

I tell my therapist’s therapist, 
“My ghost has trauma. It's all, um, bloody. 
even in the eyes 
and shit—” She tells me, of course, 

“because your ghost is fucking dead.”

Oh. I get it--
I don't get it. 

Oh I get--
Wait, no. 

               I may enter the divergent state now,         some circles that look like squares, some
inkblots that look like schmears,                          some dimensions that look like they house tentacle-
bearded overlords,                                      and so now she tells me 
                that I am now ready to put a name to all this loss of basic human recognition. 

Everyone's doing the trauma drama shuffle, 
I realize on the beige chaise, free disassociating; 
it's just like The Urkel 
but you just cry while you weave 
through the same motions. 

So I get up. I dance, fists 
clapping from front 
to back, forcing another tear
                down my spine.

​

*This poem will be included in the forthcoming collection from Girl Noise Press Fragilidad y Free Dissociation (Fall 2027).

​

​Michael DuBon is a first-generation US citizen of Guatemalan descent. He is the author of the poetry collection Fragilidad y Free Dissociation (Girl Noise Press, forthcoming 2027) and his poems have appeared in The Meadow and others. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Plentitudes, Heartwood, and others. At his most natural, he is laughing and smiling like no one is watching—because even his cat is over it and naps in the other room.