Sabina Breaking Silence

Poems by Pamela Moore Dionne

The way these women manage to charm us with every conceivable
psychic perfection until they have attained their purpose is one of
nature's greatest spectacles.
                           Sigmund Freud in a letter to C.G. Jung

My Rostov on Don girlhood was troubled. My family, under siege,
sent me to Zurich for therapy where you say I began your siege.

I am loved, even by my landlady. I cannot fathom why.
I don't face her with my truth, nor tolerate the details of her siege.

My only thoughts are of you. The way your white hands rest
against the chair arms. Would that they were my arms, your siege.

You write Freud that I have seduced you, yet it is I who am seduced.
You conspire together for godhood, entire schools of thought under siege.

I take my cure in your arms, couched, client number tattooed on my heart.
You call me a woman patient – say a complex mothers this siege.

One day I will be purged from my skin by a bullet that delivers me from you.
Until that day I embrace dreams dreamt under my father and grandfather's siege.

I am called Sabina in slow convolutions. Spielrein is pure play
in medical school where cadavers and students alike are under siege.