You are five. Your father tells you he will kill himself. But not today. You listen every night, with an impeccable concentration, for any noise, any silent scream, muffled breathing, just in case. Not tonight. Until one day you pack this all inside you and stop caring – you’re older now, stronger. On the surface you are a stone – cold and unmoveable. Within, you’re hurting. Fear. Every time you walk in a room, even now, twenty years later, you’re dreading that you’ll find something, someone. Even in empty rooms. Even when he’s no longer close to you. Your feet are always cold. Every time the house creaks, the floor board cracks, you jolt, your heart tremors. Even when it’s only you here, it’s only you.
***
A dream brings this to surface. I look at him and scream LOSER LOSER LOSER YOU HAVE GIVEN UP LOSER. In this dream my father tells me he’s leaving. We know what that means. I become a stone, a stone with soul and meat and a heart hurting. The heart of a stone. Bleeding stones. I walk rigid and stiff, I am a frozen river. Inside I flow with pain.
This script of fear has been running in the background like a damaged radio spitting its news and distorted music out of tune. Spitting if I kill myself it’s because of you, you’ll be happier without me. Poems of too much grief to recite to a small girl whose heart craves a safe loving.
Now this comes to surface and dissolves through my skin. The fear is acidic, burning inside until it’s purified. Released.
To heal, you must illuminate these dark parts, pain memories, memories stuck in your veins like plaques.
To heal, you must name them. Some names will roll out of your tongue with ease, others will be gripping, almost impossible to spit out. Some stories will be easy to tell and flow into lucid poems that rhyme. Other stories will be heavy, convoluted matters, demanding courage to be told, to be named. Name them anyway.
***
This fear no longer resides here.
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