the online magazine for the creative writer in us all

THE COFFEE PRESS JOURNAL
January / February 2008

Our Work, Our Art, Our Lives

Page 14

That Thing That by Joseph H. Gorman, III, MD

What is that thing
that crawls into the  
little hallowed hollow space
between the meat of your heart
and the effervescence of your soul
on dark nights after
long ugly days?

That thing that
keeps you away from
the good happy feelings –
the fullness of enjoying
those around you.

That thing that
makes you worry about
not having enough.

That thing that
makes you dissatisfied
with yourself and -
and everything you love.

That thing that
makes you desire it
your way when you really
don’t even know
what your way is.

That thing that
likes to sit in the
comfort of your fatigue
and whisper simple but
compelling things in your
minds tired empty ear.

Whispers that throw
the irreparable regrets
of the past in stark black
lonely despairing relief against
the ominous distorting fear
of the never arriving but
ever coming future.

Murmurings
that allow that thing
to run the controls while
you become bound in
a shadowy back room of sprit
watching yourself go in
directions the real you
would never choose.

You know it is not you.
You know it is
the wrong direction.
But you go –
you seem to have to.

While you can
shake that thing off
with the help of the well
rested mourning sunshine and
a big cup of hot sweet coffee 
it is unspeakably hard
to right what it wronged.

The wounds it has
drilled into the loving flesh
of emotion around you
often heal as slowly as
the forgotten eternity between
the ticks of the relentlessly
unforgiving clock.

Slow healing wounds
that that thing softly and
subtlety use to enter and
ultimately control loved ones
turning them, with time
to create new wounds in you
and the ones around you
that you love most.

That thing that
is like a virus – a disease
that jumps from one loved one
to the next, to the next, to the next…
as it circles the globe of 
common existence at something
that mockingly dwarfs
the speed of unforgiving light.

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