Celluloid Childhood
This poem is meant to tell how my trauma is what sparks my creativity and shows how my first childhood trauma, my parent's divorce, is when my creativity first showed up in hyperbole.
Sara Conrad
1/14/20261 min read
Brief snippets of life
Flash across a screen.
Reflecting off the smoke
Of my faulty wiring.
Childhood condensed to
Clicks of a View-Master.
Click-click, Jimmy is screaming
“There’s rats in the doghouse!!”
Click-click, my parents laughing,
As we play with the puppies.
Click-click, a family in a wagon
Episode V at the drive-in.
Click-click, my parents smiling,
As we play cardboard light sabers.
Click-click, Jimmy and I watching,
Soundlessly crying from the stairs.
Click-click, a rupturing family,
Now forever Mom and Dad.
The first short circuit creating
Trauma--birthing imagination.
The storm rolls in as Dad says goodbye
Howling winds carry our cries away,
The sea of tears fills our house
As couches float by on salty waves.
Click-click, Click-click