< Volume II: Issue 2 >
Borderline Personality Disorder
by Tonianne Druckman
let’s talk about
the wheels in our heads.
the ones from which
crystalline icicles hang;
the rusted, corroded ones
that haven’t gotten any use
since the burning
summer days
of childhood.
you were abandoned.
poor little thing you were,
with three sisters.
one merely an infant;
you had a decade to your name,
and nothing else.
at age thirty you had a child.
you were a success,
for you had not died young.
not yet.
you had many jobs,
many women,
money to spend
and all of new york city
to fill an aching void you
never acknowledged.
you had it easy, finally.
but you must have known
that when the doctor said that
it was a little girl
that it would not be all
frilly dresses and dollhouses.
you must have known
that when your little girl grew up,
she would become a woman,
fitted with breasts and bras for them;
and she would have to accept
that she would bleed
without wound.
you must have known
that when another doctor said that
“your daughter wants to take her own life—“
you had no idea.
in your head
you were abandoned again.
i remember very vividly
sitting in my first apartment at age eighteen,
recalling what the doctor told me not long before:
“you have issues with abandonment.
but they’re imagined.”
i was never
thrown to the wolves.
Borderline Personality Disorder
by Tonianne Druckman
let’s talk about
the wheels in our heads.
the ones from which
crystalline icicles hang;
the rusted, corroded ones
that haven’t gotten any use
since the burning
summer days
of childhood.
you were abandoned.
poor little thing you were,
with three sisters.
one merely an infant;
you had a decade to your name,
and nothing else.
at age thirty you had a child.
you were a success,
for you had not died young.
not yet.
you had many jobs,
many women,
money to spend
and all of new york city
to fill an aching void you
never acknowledged.
you had it easy, finally.
but you must have known
that when the doctor said that
it was a little girl
that it would not be all
frilly dresses and dollhouses.
you must have known
that when your little girl grew up,
she would become a woman,
fitted with breasts and bras for them;
and she would have to accept
that she would bleed
without wound.
you must have known
that when another doctor said that
“your daughter wants to take her own life—“
you had no idea.
in your head
you were abandoned again.
i remember very vividly
sitting in my first apartment at age eighteen,
recalling what the doctor told me not long before:
“you have issues with abandonment.
but they’re imagined.”
i was never
thrown to the wolves.
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