Chapter 4: Lost & Haunted: Poems of Trauma, Loss and Dissociation
Having grown up with emotional neglect, I thought I had finally woken up when I saw myself through the eyes of love—with a girl, a young woman named Celta. That moment cracked open a new self. And still, the impulse to explain myself never left me. Maybe someone here knows that feeling too.
There was a time when I thought I had finally arrived—at love, at home, in a life of success, accomplishment, and peaceful contentment. Lynn was that life. Our love gave shape and meaning to everything else. It buffered me from old wounds, from the shadows of emotional neglect, and let me believe that, maybe, I was no longer invisible.
But then a meteor came crashing down upon my life. Lynn’s illness caught up with her. I was a healer—but only for the mind. All I could do was watch. It was like watching a fire consume everything I had built.
In the smoke and ash of that loss, I turned to my family of origin. I held out the ruins, hoping they’d see the devastation I couldn’t hide. But the truth is—I couldn’t even hide from it. The grief was all-consuming, like a fire itself—burning through everything I was, everything I’d built, everything I thought would last.
Instead of comfort, I received a bizarre sense of blame. As if I deserved it. As if I had brought it upon myself.
That was perhaps the cruelest wound—not the fire itself, but the silence that followed. I was no longer just grieving Lynn and the life I had. I was confronting that ancient, familiar ache: I am not worthy. I am not welcome. I spent a lifetime explaining myself to those who never intended to understand.
The moment I knew everything had changed was the day I walked into our home - Lynn’s and mine - and saw it being packed up. Her mother, who once bought us that house, was now preparing it for sale. It was too real. Too final. I stepped into the computer room—just to be out of sight of the boxes—and felt my legs give way. My body needed support; I slipped down the wall to a sitting position. The life force was gone.
This is the place these poems come from:
A world where identity collapses,
where memory stings like smoke in your eyes,
and where love, once lost, becomes a ghost you chase in dreams.
Dreamed I was a ghost
I dreamed I was a ghost,
seeking you... screaming your name.
But you would not answer.
Then I could not find you.
I was alone,
an invisible spectator...
watching everything around me,
unable to be heard or seen,
haunting the once familiar spaces.
Now haunted - terrified - by the strangeness
of it all.
In the Boat
This time it felt
just like a premonition.
In the dream,
I felt like a ghost -
I was there with you
transparent to your sight;
you looked right through me
not seeing me.
My love for you
keeps these dreams alive.
There is something familiar
about the place.
There, by the water
we stood,
yet you did not see me.
I watched you enter your sailboat.
I tried to call out to you;
I was scared
of losing you.
I watched you drift away,
fading out of sight.
The boat I enter
takes me back in time -
back to you.
Not Even Footprints Remain
Sometimes it seems that
I'm writing these words
on the sand,
like in that quaint picture,
"footprints in the sand."*
The wind is in my face...
Is this all there is?
Words that fade as fast as I write them?
My words dry as sand
that blows in my face
blinding me?
If only I could get you to look
before my words are lost.
In my vision, on the sand,
there are no footprints...
As if I'd never come here,
and never written these words.
Or it never mattered
what I said,
you would not see...
you are not here to see.
You are gone,
like our footprints,
like my words.
Gone!
Flashback
It’s strange how a place
can age-regress you—
fold back the years in an instant.
That’s what happened
when I stood there again.
There’s a man-made jetty
that arcs out to a small island
on the beach
south of Wilmington.
The photograph draws your eye inward—
just as standing there
drew me into myself.
Time collapsed.
Suddenly I was not just in a place—
but in a moment.
Our first day together,
our first real outing—
and the life we were about to build
had just begun.
Today,
the wind off the water
and the hush of waves
surprised me.
The place held the memory—
and the memory held me.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
I like to believe
I'm just like anyone else—
that we all have limits.
There’s only so much
pain, fear, loss—
trauma—
we can carry
and still remain
ourselves.
Still hold on
to our values,
our sense of self,
the person we hoped to be.
But when the weight exceeds that limit,
something breaks.
We drift.
Not into sleep,
but somewhere else.
A fogged place.
Out of time.
Out of reach.
Sometimes,
if we’re lucky,
we come back.
But not everyone does.
Reflection: This poem echoes the confessional tradition of poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, whose work dared to name the raw edges of psychic pain. Sexton’s To Bedlam and Part Way Back still haunts me. I sometimes wonder if she ever could make it all the way back.
I did.
At least, I think I did.
But some nights,
the line between coming back
and simply existing
feels paper-thin.
Introduction to the poem
*“Dissociative fugue,” once called “psychogenic fugue,” is a rare phenomenon marked by sudden, unexpected wandering or travel, combined with amnesia for one’s identity and past. It sometimes involves taking on a new identity.
After recovery, memories typically return, and further treatment is often unnecessary. *
I felt this idea of a fugue state was a good metaphor for a time in my life.
Fuge State
I come to,
or awake,
finding myself already walking
somewhere unknown.
I’m not sure how I got here,
where here is,
or even where I meant to go.
A misty rain drifts down,
mingling with tears
that blur my eyes,
slide warm down my cold face.
Fog lifts off the street like smoke
as day slips toward night,
unwinding the edges of everything.
Street signs leer at me —
unrecognizable,
taunting with names that mean nothing.
I want to run.
Back.
Back in time.
Somewhere in this haze,
my mind glimpses
what can’t be real,
must be the
dream within
this dream.
Hours slip by.
My hands have gone numb.
Cold seeps through my coat
and down my back.
There is no sidewalk.
The winter streets slick with rain
or ice — I can’t quite tell.
Cars whip around corners,
far too fast —
their headlights slicing through me.
Each time I tell myself
they will miss me,
just like the last did.
Just like the lightning
will wait —
let me reach somewhere.
Not home —
that was long ago.
Home is gone.
Dogs bark in the distance.
I hope they keep to their fences,
hope I’m invisible.
No one knows where I am.
No one is waiting.
No one needs me
to get home safe.
Awareness trickles in,
thin as the lifting fog.
I stumble,
knees hit the cold asphalt —
not in reverence, only weakness —
and I whisper into the wet dark,
“Please help me.”
How pointless.
Even if belief could matter,
what would it change?
Walking again,
I see a convenience store glowing ahead.
A phone inside.
A roommate’s number
I can almost recall.
Being alone,
lost,
is a state of mind
that endures.
I will keep walking
unknown streets
in unknown towns,
alone
with no
identity.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_fugue
Lost
How did I get
so lost?
At first,
I thought I recognized the road.
A curve, a sign—
faint echoes of somewhere I’d been.
But then—
nothing familiar.
The signs made no sense.
The darkness deepened.
So I drove faster.
“Eventually something
will make sense,”
I told myself.
Fear crept in—
not ordinary fear,
but an existential kind.
The kind that whispers
you might not be real,
that no one is coming,
that even you don’t know
where you are.
My palms sweated.
Heart raced.
I was alone, in a dream
wearing the face of a nightmare.
So I turned off the road—
onto another,
even more unfamiliar.
No signs.
No map.
Just an instinct,
like something inside me screaming,
Anywhere but here.
But the fear didn’t fade.
It grew.
A new kind of terror -
not just from being lost,
but from knowing
I had once been found...
and still ended up here.
I’ve had this dream before.
Always the same turn.
Always the same ending.
The moment before waking,
I whisper inside the dream,
No. I can’t face this.
And I wake.
Still unsure
how I got
so far from myself.
