After the Storm
A study on PTSD (in the style of Richard Siken)
The thunder doesn’t stop when the clouds clear.
Each car door slam, each dropped plate
becomes artillery fire. My hands remember
the weight of things I never held. The medic’s voice
saying stay with me, but I’m already gone,
back there where the air tastes like copper
and diesel.
Yesterday I found myself
crouched behind the grocery store dumpster
counting my breaths like bullets.
What do you call it when your body
lives in two times at once? When every sunset
looks like something burning?
I keep a list of safe places taped inside
my wallet: library corner, passenger seat,
underneath the kitchen table where the light
comes through blue curtains. But safety
is theoretical when your brain speaks
in explosions. The therapist says ground yourself
in the present moment, so I touch everything
twice: doorknobs, coffee mugs, my own face
in the mirror — just to make sure
they’re real, just to make sure I’m real.
Sometimes I wake up tasting sand.
Sometimes I don’t wake up at all,
just drift between nightmares like a ghost
haunting my own life. The neighbor’s kid
plays with sparklers in the driveway
and I’m on my knees in the living room,
searching for an exit that isn’t there.
How many ways can a person splinter
before the pieces stop fitting back together?
Every night I build a fortress of pillows,
practice saying I’m home, I’m home, I’m home
until the words taste less like lies.
After the Storm" (Siken-inspired): I aimed to capture Siken's characteristic intensity and fragmented narrative style. His work often features:
• Repetitive, urgent imagery that circles back on itself
• Quick jumps between present and past
• A sense of being trapped in memory
• Physical sensations tied to emotional states
In this poem, I used:
• The thunder/artillery connection as a central metaphor for how PTSD transforms everyday sounds
• Present-tense narration interrupted by flashbacks
• Concrete details (grocery store dumpster, copper taste) mixed with abstract questions
• Short, sharp sentences alternating with longer, flowing ones to create a sense of anxiety and hypervigilence
• The question format that Siken often employs to express psychological complexity