Highways and Byways: Wharton Creek

By Maik Strosahl

I was driving from Omaha this afternoon when I heard a song come on the radio that brought back some memories. Back in 2003, my nephew and nieces were visiting for the summer while I lived in Indiana. As we were driving, they asked me to put in a new CD they bought, they wanted me to listen to this cool spooky song they heard.
    The album was “Fallen,” by the band Evanescence. I had already heard one hit from it entitled “Bring Me to Life.” The song they wanted me to listen to was titled “Hello,” and I listened to it over and over. It is a pretty piano and voice-driven song, but with very dark lyrics. I remember the hair on my neck standing up when I thought I had figured out its meaning. I was convinced it was someone discovering they had another personality inside themself.
    I lived for many years with a person who was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD). They would be in mid-conversation and suddenly would become another personality. It was very confusing sometimes, but I came to know many of their traits.
    The way I understand it, DID occurs usually when someone is faced with something dramatic they cannot handle. The person’s brain protects them by creating a personality to deal with that issue. If it starts early in one’s development it can happen many times, to the point that there can be dozens of distinct personalities. Treatment involves dealing with the issues that caused the fractures of personalities with the eventual goal to reintegrate them into one healthy state of mind. The problem that I remember the most was the fear of individual personalities who felt that integration was somehow a death to them. There were many long late-night discussions about this.
    While the song seemed to deal with the discovery of a personality, I had an idea that involved the healing of an individual, and addressed that in the poem below.


Lay me down
in meadow grasses,
where we once lost ourselves
listening to the gurgle
of Wharton Creek.
Cover me with
Black-eyed Susans,
gathered in bouquets.
Stay a while
and tell me stories
of the beautiful world you see
though your bright eyes.
Mine were always
too dark.

You do not remember
the day I was born,
the day he declared his love
with gifts and kind words,
then tore into my panties,
pushing his thick fingers
there.
You escaped
to the tall green grass,
while I kept
screaming for mommy,
and he
pressed his hand
over my mouth
for silence.

My,
how you have grown
by these waters,
but you always
let me play,
dancing among the wildflowers
as you stared
through empty years,
searching for the secret
I bore away.

But you know now.
You do not need me anymore,
your black-eyed Susan,
the one playing hide-and-seek
with your memories,
peeking out
at the most
inopportune times.
It is time for you
to face life full-on,
complete.

So lay me down
in the tall meadow grass,
where we once lost ourself.
Let me listen to the waters,
and maybe even
to a story from you
once in a while,
one of the beautiful world
you have come to know
beyond Wharton Creek.

Copyright © 2021 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.