by Connor Petty
My therapist assigned me a sheet,
within it describes a grounding exercise, called
the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. Basically, it is supposed to
break me from my loop of desperation
take my nerves off my mind, my memories,
By delaying my compulsions
And stimulating my senses,
To indulge myself in my physical
surroundings, i.e.
(5) What is something you can see? I see an unlit candle,
atop a dull counter.
(4) What is something you can hear? I hear the crackle of my chasing trauma’s footsteps through the woods I boundlessly attempt to escape a flame,
becoming ignited.
(3) What is something you can taste? I taste burnt ashes,
floating like dry snow — upon the tip of my sweating tongue, for all the times
My voice was bashed and shut out, shoved and isolated within anxiety’s obsessive dungeon.
(2) What is something you can smell? I smell the scent of bonfire,
sky-high, slowly burning away the branches of trauma that are a part of me
and leaving ashes,
ashes that cohesively stick to me. Ashes stronger than the wind, which blows time
forward through the tallest trees and shortest shrub, but not my trauma away.
My voices are the wind’s calls to the rain,
as the flames, the fingers of the eternally burning branches in the woods, touch the sky as they did me.
No matter how many times I meditate, or shower, or walk through nature, they
always linger around the corner and within my being.
(1) What is something you can feel? I feel the overcast from my soul’s shadow
hair
I pull out of my body, to soak the fire.
I focus and look again.
This time, I see a blank wall, I contemplate if it’s even there.
I take out
my notepad, and record my experience, in permanent
pen. It’s a process, I remind myself.
I remember the phrase, which continues to haunt me. It’s a relentless process
My hair burns in the horrors
Of the wailing trees, in the unbearably sharp wind of time,
time never moves for all of me.
Connor Petty is a neurodivergent poet in high school who grew up in Florida. He wishes to spread the voice of the abused and harassed, especially those with inherited mental illnesses or lifelong mental health issues they developed as results from trauma. He believes while most are unable to forget or truly overcome trauma, it does not have to be silenced.
Emerge Literary Journal 