“The Empty Chair Technique involves the client addressing the empty chair as if another person, or aspects of their personality, or a certain feeling etc. was in it.”

Today, I am going away

where none can reach,

and I am looking over my bedroom,

coldly nodding

at everything in its place.

This house was never mine,

and I was never really here.

Dad, you said you would teach,

but all I ever learned

was how to run faster,

and, boy, did I grow up

when you pulled out that saw and said,

“I’ll give you a head start.”

In your little house by the water,

it has been

sink or swim

and you put your hands on me like waves

to push

so, locked underwater, my lungs filled,

and I couldn’t speak against your rage.

So I wrote,

but, Mom, you never liked it,

and I learned that

some words can be so true they’re a lie,

so I never wrote

about parents again.

There will come a day

when I have the strength to stand

at the waterfront and

dig up sand and

shake my fist at the tumultuous waves of your household

and

shout

“Knock me down, if you can.”

And they won’t.

But today, I am going away,

Father,

where haunts, where violence

will recede

like the shoreline on a new horizon

out over the sea,

where freedom tastes like salt and

doing all the things you said I can’t.

And you will never find

a letter waiting

because I will be out on open water,

safe,

rocked to sleep at night

by the cradling sea, Mother.

And by day,

I will swim

and learn the things I ought

and stay afloat

in my own time.

With no burden on my back,

I could write this message in a bottle

which I will send out,

and, maybe someday,

it will land near you,

Mom and Dad,

and someday you’ll understand:

I am strong in spite of you.

Maybe someday.

But today, I am going away.