Dissocia*

I’m groaning. My stepfather comes in rubs my legs. My mother comes in arms folded standing there not saying a word eyes full of tears. Father looks at her, don’t worry it’s growing pains. Doctor hits one knee with a little rubber mallet then the other, whispers to her. In phone booth, she cries, Roger has polio. I fall to the curb she picks me up, I’m seven. In our new home in Long Beach my mother packs my suitcase, Where we going? Ambulance arrives I’m placed on a stretcher ambulance roars off lights flashing siren sounding. Car darts in front of ambulance, doesn’t he know this is an ambulance? Arrive at LA General Hospital, rolled into a large room with fifty beds or more, I end up in the middle of the room talking to a boy in an elongated crib like mine. Now In a room with a doctor, sticks a needle in my back I cry I yell it won’t  hurt if you lie still you told me it wouldn’t hurt you didn’t lie still, boy in bed on other side of room he’s crying then he’s not he’s dead. Back in the big room, rolled out onto a screened in porch, it’s overflowing with kids like me, we’re all sick we lie there silent hurting. My mother comes I can see her down the hall she can’t come in, another day she comes in with my father wearing  surgical gowns, they leave toys or is that another mother and father leaving toys? In an ambulance again back to Long Beach, in a hospital room with one other child, can’t watch television, Graham crackers and milk at night aunt uncle sister cousin talk to me through the open window, parents with me in my room. Rolled over to the clinic black mask over my mouth and nose, breathe relax dizzy can move my legs, therapists  smile as gas passes through, hot packs on my legs exercising dressing undressing dressing learning to swim. After a month and a week finally go home. In bed for months. Mother becomes ill another ambulance arrives, she’s close to death, arms black and blue from needles saving her. My first escape into another world, read about Jerry West and Oscar Robinson, watched Raymond Berry and Lenny Moore too. I will look like them, I pass into a palace not attached to my bed or wheelchair or to tightness in my legs, two separate worlds Which one forms me? The second one, it’s Dissocia. I live there and visit the world you think is the only one. In Dissocia there is no polio, in Dissocia my mind untethers from your world, I follow a script In Dissocia. Where is Dissocia? It’s right next to your world, it’s permeable, I walk in both worlds, can you begin to see it now? I hope so but you probably won’t because trauma at that age exerted energy in my brain and passed me into another world. When you see me I’m  always In Dissocia, but you can’t tell, I know, because I’ve only lately realized it myself. * the name of a play that goes between a hospital bed and a fantasy world. Dissocia is a derivative of the word dissociative, as in a dissociative mental split.