Retention

The boss informs me
that my hours will be cut back.
Of course, she tells me before Thanksgiving
and Christmas and New Year, because
coffins are always blooming
in this world
and, to make matters worse,
she tells me
why
and the why is because, apparently,
my ‘retention’ is bad
and, of course, I immediately think of urinary retention
and the fluid retention of edema
and bile retention
and retention of teeth
and I think of tension
and re-tension,
and re-re and
how tension keeps happening
again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and
I treat patients with anxiety,
severe anxiety—
the irony—
and particularly ones in
poverty (which clashes like mourning against poetry and pottery and peripeteia)
and I hear her silence on the other end,
and how I explain
the complications
of corporations’
causing
of corpsing
and I try to explain the pit and the pendulum of capitalism,
warning,
and the reality,
really,
is that I see, disproportionately poorer people of color who’re male
who walk the street to get here, no money even for a bus,
men who sleep in their cars and prostitute themselves to ironwork (like family)
who work 9 to 9 six days a week, not 9 to 5 five days a week,
but 9 9 six,
the Hell of minimum rage,
of maximum exploitation
and she says the others aren’t having trouble making their retention numbers
and I tell her
I’m the only male therapist in my area
and my area
is Detroit
and the majority of the other therapists are in
Grosse Pointe Farm$ and
Bloomfield Hill$ and
N¢rthville and
Boringtown and
and Liv¢nia (one of the whitest cities in the entirety of the entire U.S.’s entirety)

and that middle-to-upper class white female therapists are seeing
middle-to-upper class white female clients
and who has good retention?
who is open to and can afford longer-term therapy?
and who can’t?

and I tell her that men drop out of therapy sooner
and poorer clients drop out of therapy sooner
and that I get inner-city clients who come in and tell me
at the first session,
Look, I can only afford about three sessions.
I don’t have insurance.
Can you try to help me as much as you can in like three weeks?
And I tell them about free care at community mental health
and about Give an Hour
and about therapists who do sliding scale
and they only see me for one,
two,
maybe three
sessions
and we cover a lot in onetwothree sessions,
a lot,
a lot of low- to no-budget self-care options,
how meditation is free,
how prayer is free,
how church
and mosque
and synagogue
is free,
how hiking is free,
how—and I give them a list of options, phone numbers to call, places to reach out—
that are free,

but it lowers my numbers,
my retention numbers,
my retention micromanagements,
my retention microaggressions,
my retention macrolocustfamineorwellplagues,
and so the boss tells me
that
unfortunately,
they’re going to cut back on my hours
and I think of a knife hacking away at time
and they’re going to cut back on my hours
until I can increase my retention
and I think of retention of feces
and catch-22s
and no-win and
the terrorism of a nagging anagnorisis and
I think of the guy I saw for a month who was living in a tent
under a bridge
on the Huron River
again and again,
his loss of his home,
and I find that
I can’t afford air conditioning
anymore
but I can just barely make rent
and so I stay up till 4 a.m. most nights
so I can have all the windows open
because it’s been in the 90s during the day
but in the low 70s at night
and I get a slight breeze
with the air quality at 88
sweating into my bedsheets
until I want to go to sleep
and then I close the windows
because it’s too dangerous to leave them open,
but I won’t quit,
because people need therapy,
all people,
or need to be informed
of
how they can get into cheaper or free therapy
to survive
and I’ll survive,
and it feels so freeing
to not care about my retention numbers
and not to care about numbers
to be numb to numbers
brrrrr
the fight-or-flight-or-freeze of barely making rent
but
to instead care
about
people.

 

It’s called
a calling.

 

Trying
is an art,

 

I guess you could say
I have a hell.

 

give
down

(never the
reverse)

I Repeat, In the Military…

“nothing left
but invisible”
—Lance Larsen,
“Backyard Georgics”

the fence.  Our wrists
like Jesus.  No nails.

Duct tape.  They’d leave us
there in the sun.  Or

in the moon.  For
hours.  No reason.

Just hazing.
Just having

something to do.
I told this to a doc

at the V.A.
He looked me, yes

straight in the eyes
and said one word:
Torture.
The word sat there.

The word rotted there.
We rotted there.

Burned in the sun.
Moonburned.

Mosquitos
mostly owning us.

No ability to swat,
not

with wrists
Christed,

And we’d resurrect
when we were let go,

memory
locked into our bodies.

Me.
Mine.

And the others.
I feel nothing now

for the military.
An aching absence.

I tell this to the therapist
at the V.A.  He looks tired.

I tell him this story.
It’s my first time ever telling this story.

I tell it to a PTSD counselor.
I tell him this story.

He writes things down.
He writes more things down.

Then he looks at me, says,
Did you ever do that to anybody?

 

I can’t believe this is the question.

I’m not ready for this to be the question.
I thought there’d be empathy and not question.

 

No, I say, in shock, No, of course not.
I’d’ve killed myself if I did that to someone.

 

He writes.
He looks at me.

He says, Are you sure you never did that to anybody?

 

Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me?
I look at him and realize, there’s nothing, no rapport,

no affinity,
no humanity,

no sensibility.
Are you kidding me?

I look at him.
Are you kidding me?

I can’t speak.
Is that really the follow-up question?
Are you kidding me?

 

I sit there in silence.

I was a teenager.
I was a child.

I was a kid.
They did it to me.

It took decades to open up about this.
Decades.

And this is the response?
They say show-don’t-tell, but fuck don’t-tell             ;

I think of the doctor, his one-word response,
how it floored me, how he said it

like Kurtz.

 

But then,
the therapist,

how he
was looking at me, studying me, examining me, lessening me,

with disgust.
I was lost.

I’m still lost.
Who do you open up to

when the ones
who are trained

aren’t?

 

My stomach, jungle,
my heart, tundra,

my head, desert.

 

The      hell
of                     help!

 

the sleepicides
of nightmareremembrances

how ghosts
choke

 

And yet
I know

I don’t care.
I’m lucky to be
alive
at all

even without any compassion.
The Spear of Longinus.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki’s listening to Michael Small’s “Rooftop Intruder” from the klute original soundtrack recording (remastered).