Flashback
It’s like this. Something kicks it off —
a sharp word, a noise, the soughing of the wind,
an unexpected, complex animal smell —
a thing that is not exactly of the event
but close enough to make the leap,
to confound the present and loop back to the past,
to make of a breeze, or the lemon scent of polish,
a trigger that re-enacts the moment.
Not a drama, with its little lies and embellishments,
its opportunities for creating a bit of mileage,
but the real thing, complete and inescapable,
total immersion in the event itself;
exactly as it happened, in every fibre of your body:
the skin becoming clammy, the chill, the rigidity,
the shutting down of your stomach and liver,
the bile in your throat that is really adrenaline,
the bitter taste that comes with survival.
What you see without seeing, what you hear
without hearing, are the crystals
of memory dissolving in your blood.
Suddenly you are acting from another, older place,
living in two times simultaneously:
your mind alerted, with its calculating edge,
your subtle heart banished to unreachable safety;
the old reptile part of you hanging on,
ready to do anything to get back to the dark,
to peace, to the cool embrace of silence;
and if that means lashing out or hurting, if that
means wounding with tooth, or tongue, or blade,
so be it.
Afterwards the shame, the shaky hands, the staring,
the reinventions of history, the never-ever-agains.
I have hurt the people that I have loved most dearly,
and try as I may, the truth is, I could hurt them again.
My hope, as the spiral winds down to its centre,
is that they might come to look at me
without an edge of fear.
© William Ayot Published in Small Things that Matter |
Psychosexual therapist Juliet Grayson, and award winning poet William Ayot return with another series of their successful talks, exploring the many faces of shame. They combine examples from their lives, psychotherapeutic understandings and the unique insights of poetry, providing an engaging and authentic exploration of the subject. Ideal for practitioners and those who wish to explore their own issues in a safe way.
This workshop is an all day event and covers such aspects as:
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