Several poems, both spoken and written, a story, and an illustration
Follow the journey as displayed, jump around, or start at the end and work backwards. As always, pick what works and leave the rest.
A poem: Untitled
My emotions pass through me like a river
I try to capture them
To record this experience
But they are fish slipping through my grasp
If only I had just done that
If only I had just done this
Regret is a nagging friend
Whispering in my ear
Reminding me of all of the things I’ve done wrong
And all the time that has passed
I don’t have to feel this way, I tell myself
But I do anyway
The guilt travels up and down the center of my torso
At moments releasing but mostly stays
A consistent undercurrent of sick and pressure
I know you said that I don’t have to do anything
But I feel an obligation to respond
And so the energy is held there
In suspension
In waiting
To send my response
To receive the onslaught
Did you know that animals shake to release trauma?
The mechanism moves energy so it doesn’t get stuck and leave a residue of the memory
But I can’t shake this off
It’s a hook in my stomach and the chain is
Clank
Clank
Clank
My stomach is in a compactor machine
And it is
Slowly
Slowly
Crushing my insides
I shake my body
And again
And again
And again
And again
And Again
Again
Again
Again
Again
Again
Is this how it is done?
Will this shaking shake out the memories my body plays over and over?
A poem: Untitled
This pain is a prison
I’m stabbed in the chest
The knife drags down my sternum and twists
I am engulfed
I can’t think about anything else
I can’t do anything else
And at the same time pulled to do something
For a time, I forget and I am free
I’m in the moment and light as air
But then it peaks through
It all comes flooding back
And the knife returns
I am frozen
Caught between not wanting to deal with it
And wanting to just get it over with
Guilt is a burden
A burden passed from mother to child who becomes a mother
But I will not carry that torch
I am the end of dysfunction
My child will not carry these wounds
A meditation: The Storm
The chaos swirls around me
I can’t see
The rain is so thick it is as if a wall is in front of my face
I blink to clear the water from my eyes
The wind howls
My ears strain
I am in a vortex
I am blind and deaf
In this moment, it feels like forever
In this moment, I am lost and I cannot see the clearing
But the storm will end
It always does
Hold onto that
The storm will end
Use it as an anchor
The storm will end
Let the chaos swirl
The storm will end
A visual meditation: Sensations
A Story The web of wounds
I once did a heart center meditation
It was something I had not done before
When the narrator guided me to bring my attention to my heart, I flinched
It was like touching a wound, raw and infected
My skin crawled and I couldn’t continue
A few weeks later, I had a sonogram done of my heart
And when the technician pressed the wand over my chest, the same sensation rose.
The procedure lasted almost 10 minutes and the whole time, I braced myself
Had to hold myself back
To not push her hand away
To not yell at her “Don’t touch me!”
To not retreat
To not scurry to the corner of the table and curl myself up like an abused dog
What is this invisible wound, I wondered?
What is this hurt?
My hurting heart?
Is it from my childhood?
From my mother?
From my father?
From my childhood friends?
But all childhood friends are ruthless and unkind
And mothers and fathers can also be hurtful
They all have their own wounds
How sad that we carry these wounds and then inflict damage on our own kind to wound them
Who then do the same to others
A web of wounds, really
That is what our society has become
Our society is built on a web of wounds
We hurt – deep from wound inflicted on us from childhood
From parents
and siblings
friends
aunts
uncles
grandparents
The wounds are imprinted in our skin and we carry them heavy
Is this why we feel so tired?
And we do our own damage
On our parents
Siblings
Friends
Children
And so we are connected by these wounds
Imprisoned by those who hurt us or did us wrong
And we replay the narrative and get trapped
To wound or be wounded again
An illustration + observation: The Tree
Today, I saw a tree that had dipped its trunk into the water
The day was overcast
Grey cotton balls stretched across the sky
It was humid but the drops of rain that hit my skin were cold
I have a love/hate relationship with those droplets of rain
The water was a relief against the heat but the acute sensation was jarring to my nervous system
I had come to the water’s edge when I saw the tree
It was a single trunk that had dipped itself in to take a drink from the water
Or maybe it was trying to cool off
The curve of the branches juxtaposed the curve of the water’s ripples
How far down did it go, I wondered?
I didn’t know
I wondered if it touched the bottom
And what did it see
I’m sure the world was different from the world it lived in
And maybe that’s why it went in
It wanted to see
It wanted to experience something different
And so it decided to grow that way
It took its time to reach its destination
And now it’s there
I wonder if it has any regrets.
Nicole Vitale 