Oh say, can you see? In the five seconds it takes the local celebrity to intone the first five words of our nation’s anthem, the scenes explode in my memory. Like fireworks from a distant war, they come in odd flashes, completely out of context with the celebratory mood that fills the stadium. He’s taken me out to the old ballgame, certain baseball will be the cure. But bombs are bursting in my brain before the ceremonial first pitch.

It is the early ‘90s. You root for America’s team coming into their best decade of play. But your boy picks the Twins. He’s a winner, and I mistakenly think I matter to you both. Now my meteoric rise to the height of my success, like the rocket’s red glare, gives proof – some seed of trust was still here. That happy time dissolves in a fireball and there, out of the clear, blue sky, you are using foreboding phrases like “irreparable harm” to dismiss me from your life. Summarily. Without explanation.

Lightheaded, I swoon. He catches my arm, steadying me before the next blast from the past in which I see myself, melting, morphing into someone unrecognizable, paralyzed by the pain of an unthinkable act. Ostracized by an entire community of faith in a second swing of the axe, I’ve been X’d out again, painted with broad stripes as someone quite colorful and anything but a white field of innocence.

And now the final blow, your home run with a corked bat stuffed with lies someone fed you – or you pulled out of thin air – who knows, really? You swing hard and fast, rallying the fans you call friends and lawyering up for extra measure of protection. And then you step back and watch, say you have nothing to do with what happens next. You wash your hands of any responsibility in the matter, rack up some points for the team and cut your losses. And you shine on, a pillar in the game. They think you a hero and I a devil cast out from among them.

My awareness of the absurdity of it all does not stop the battering ram of memory from doing its damage. The doctors say there will be no undoing the permanence of the wound, no hope of total healing. As for me, I still hold onto hope, though loosely now. You gotta believe. I can no longer see the sequined dress of the pop-star-wanna-be through pooling tears. The reverberating noise of battle in my head, combined with the smell of popcorn and beer, is enough to make me feel as if this were a war and I looking skyward for some streaming source of light, some revelation of hope or meaning.

An elbow in the side brings me back. This’ll be great, Dawn. He says it with the command of someone trying to raise the dead. So you say, I answer him. So you say. A lone dove flies from the rafters in the seats above, and a separate peace settles over me. I am still here, in the land of the living (if not yet home free), still standing with those who brave the firestorm and the fury of the righteous by freeing dreams that will not die.