Dark House
I entered the dark house inside my self, Walked down the hall and came to a shelf, In a cold room with wet windows and wood floor, I knelt to the ground and closed the door, The shelf bore a mirror over an empty fireplace, And when I looked up into it I saw on my face, Old portraits of those who had come before, The longer I looked the more of them I saw, They stood all around me, they tugged on my skin, They breathed on my back, within me, their sin, They didn't mean to do it but now it lives here, In the shadows of my house where floor and wall are bare, I sat among my ancestors, their wary spirits old, And I cried as I listened to the stories they told, As I cried the room filled with water, flooding all around, It engulfed my feet and rose til I left the ground, I floated up surrounded in pain, And circling around me were photos in frames, Time was suspended as I drifted there, It could have been a moment or a year, But as the pain left me I descended down and found myself again on the ground, I felt the years pass like waves on the sea, And when I opened my eyes these ghosts fled from me
- a poem I wrote about feeling emotions, especially the intergenerational emotional injuries and beliefs we inherit that have gone unhealed and suppressed for years and years, and can only be released from us by our feel through them, the grief, fear, anger. It’s time to let it go so we don’t pass it onto the next generation.
by Brittany Jackson, 6 July 2019
