Labyrinth

By: V.C. Myers

I'm so sick of being told

I'm incredibly self-aware;

as if humans are AIs and

I've just become sentient.

As if connecting the dots

from the origins of neurosis,

my heart's inmost anxieties,

to my ramshackle identity,

will birth some great truth,

freeing me from the shadow

cast by past trauma. How

young I was the first time

I crossed the threshold of

a therapist's door. My mind

tattered by all the wreckage

I'd crawled, clawed, my way

out of. Adulthood's murky

view of the prologue years.

How much she admired me,

gasping in her analytic glee,

superimposing Cassandra's

prophetic face over my own.

No one wants to be someone

else's tragic heroine. Years

later, none the wiser, I sit,

unamused, as another jaded

psychologist says I have all

the answers inside of me, to

just listen to my gut. Guts

make addled brains, I think.

Gut-wrench oracle me merely

nods as I write the check. I'll

cancel the next appointment.

What good is so-called self-

awareness, seeing the chains

binding me from within, if

the lock has no key? Why

follow a maze with no exit?

---

V.C. Myers is the author of Ophelia (Femme Salvé Books, 2023) and Give the Bard a Tetanus Shot (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2019). She has been an editor and reader for Sarabande Books, Barren Magazine, Ice Floe Press, and Frontier Poetry. Her work appears in journals such as EPOCH, Poet Lore, Coffin Bell, and Rogue Agent.

Website | Bluesky