When you feel the impossible
breathing down your neck
you’re on the right track. Don’t
stop, the work creates energy to feed
the work. Recovery is hungry. There’s a vast universe
beyond trauma, a place
not quite understood. There’s no map, no path. Mystery
is a savage freedom, a needle to stitch
the bones to the soul again, outside the systems
which warn us we should never
ever tell
the truth of being unstitched. Ignore them.
What’s gone is gone. We can’t process trauma
within the same systems that create it. We run outside
in a ferocious pack, on the edge of oceans, flowing
over spiky canyons, scrub and thistle, flowing
through cities like fog, ungovernable. We clean wounds with
sticks and stones, we hunt and cook on our own. Nobody
is free – some of us are dealing. Recovery
isn’t forgiveness, it’s too complex
for that, such as how
do we define power and who
controls it? Build your healing in the outer limits
where you can stoke raging pyres beyond either/or,
linear thinking. Be willing to examine
power dynamics; are we able
to dismantle them, or live
beyond? Be fearless. There’s no justice
in this world, so we’ll make
a new one. My rapist
will never pay for his crimes, neither will
my mother or any of the millions
who abuse us. There’s no settling
the score, no
lost and found. There is courage, though,
and unmapped territories
where we craft the beginnings
of emancipation. Born
in the darkest hour, it sparks
in community. Like this: you
will make your way, I
will find it glorious –
