Ketamine: A Portal

. . . . and laughing at the funeral

The Stone: For Karyn

We put it down together.

Not all at once.

First there was the circling.

The music opening a door.
The medicine loosening the hinges.
The old walls forgetting
their job.

Ketamine,
that strange and sacred portal,
did not give you anything new.

It simply carried you
to the place where what was always yours
had been waiting.

Waiting beneath the stone.

That heavy, polished weight
carried by hands before yours,
before mine.

It was never yours to keep.

Not John’s either.

It does not belong
in your garden.

Born of ancestors
who never found a place to lay it down,
it traveled through her~
the one who hurt you,
poisoned the well,
made you swallow
what should never have been swallowed. . .

and landed,
somehow,
in you.

Hand on heart. Hands folded in prayer.

I am here witnessing
as the weather changes.

Anger first. A storm breaking open.

Bile rising.
Words erupting.
Truth finally finding air.

“FUCK YOU.”

Again. Louder.

“F U C K Y O U.”

The cry of a child
who survived.

The cry of a woman
who no longer needs to.

Then tears. Then gratitude. Then all at once.

“I hate you.” “I love you.” “I am grateful.”

“I refuse to carry this any longer.”

Every word true. Every word holy.

Not linear. . . all here. Safe to witness.

You drift beyond yourself,
watching from somewhere above.

Edith everywhere.

The old longing:
I don’t want to feel this.

But you come back. You always come back.

The music gathers you.

Josh is there. Jayne is there.Elizabeth and Gordon.

The dogs, wise as saints,
offering their uncomplicated blessing.

The room becomes a chapel.

A dance floor. A funeral. A birth.

The stone sits in the center.

Waiting.

No longer hidden.

No longer pretending
to be your responsibility.

And then!

something shifts. Not effort. Not insight. Not fixing.

A remembering.

The portal opens wider.

The girl who carried shame
for decades begins to loosen her grip.

The girl who learned
to survive,
to strive,
to perform,
to endure -

looks down at her burden
and realizes it was never attached.

The chains were memory.

The stone was inheritance.

The suffering was real.

The ownership was not.

And suddenly . . . . . ~~~~~~~

Movement. Feet dancing.

Hands lifting. Body rocking.

Laughter arriving where grief expected
to make its home.

“I AM MAGNIFICENT.”

Not becoming.

Remembering.

The stories begin to die.

Not the facts. Not the history.

But the authority they held.

She is dead. They are dead. The shame is dead. The swallowing is dead. The belief that you must carry what was done to you -

Dead.

Let’s have a funeral!

So we bury it.

With music. With witnesses. With dogs. With tears.

With laughter.

We say: It was not okay.

We say it out loud. We say it together.

And then we let the earth
have what belongs to the earth.

There is nausea. There is relief.

There is an open-mouthed Whoooooooo -

as your body falls backward
into freedom.

“I learned to thrive despite it.”

“I put down the shame.”

“I lay the stone at her feet.”

“I reclaim my softness.”

“I reclaim my strength.”

“I reclaim my feminine self.”

And what was once crushing
becomes compost.

A story transformed.

A burden returned.

A garden made possible.

Then laughter.

Bright and unexpected.

The kind that arrives
when the prison door swings open
and you discover. . . .

it was never locked.

We are alive.

Here.

Now.

And the stone?

finally!

rests somewhere
other than your heart.

. . . . . . Relief

Love, Jayne