Fear-avoidant, that’s you, Cinderella,

my therapist says while I lie on the couch.

Freud didn’t care to look at the clients,

he knew it’s probably just female hysteria,

a false concept — turned out his patients

were abused by their fathers.

He grasped that, however,

still battled fictional demons,

not fathers and husbands — the ones 

he drank with, smoked with, talked with,

led by his hunger for pleasure.

The slipper you dropped, that’s for chase, Cinderella?

You want him to choose

but keep running away?

You have to be self-aware, Cinderella,

my therapist, never existed, still preaching, 

while I try to get over myself on their couch.

Jung, contrariwise, had gazed at his patients,

especially at Sabina —

Keira Knightley in buttoned-up dresses

would play her a century later.

He treated Sabina for hysteria,

a false concept, as we made clear.

She wrote her mental health thesis

in Zurich, where they’re walking and kissing

while something blossoms —

something always unfolds

when you’re walking and kissing.

She discovered — some people

avoid invading an alien body,

terrified of dissolving,

scared to disappear,

imagining affairs,

in short, going crazy

in a world where Carl Gustav,

a common-sense sample,

fucked her,

took her ideas,

lied to his wife

until she got tired.

Maybe it was Sabina,

or maybe Jung’s wife —

I hadn’t Googled it, so how would I know.

However, 

she wrote him for years —

Sabina, that’s for sure,

eating Viennese pastries, drinking whatever,

befriended Freud,

she was a scholar after all.

What if he still lost his way, slipper in hand? 

I ask my best shrink — made up, like Prince Charming. 

Oh well, celebrate all your madness

as Sabina bequeathed. 

Or maybe she meant something else — something better.

She was shot in a grove for being Jewish,

along with her children.

Once, I was also a person —   

Her tombstone says.

Oak trees grew from her. 

Didn’t mean to make it so gothic —

too many free associations,

to avoid flipping into female hysteria,

false concept,

which happens when you

can’t stop scrolling the news,

in a yet fucked-up world, where 

through a Jewish woman,

trees still might grow.