The Crossing

Author’s Note

This poem explores a state between stillness and motion, where the body resists and the mind persists. It reflects on moments of paralysis, physical, emotional, or spiritual and the quiet struggle to reclaim agency. Through sensation, tension, and eventual release, the poem considers what it means to will oneself back into movement and to respond when something, or someone, calls you forward.

As I lay awake on winter’s cold night,

I debate the voices that cackle in my head.

The sheets feel electric,

rubbing against my worn skin.

The moonlight forks the window,

ensnares me,

and causes me to shiver.

A tear falls

and runs down the insides of my tresses.

For I cannot move.

My tendons pay me no mind

and go about their merry little business.

I am incapacitated.

I count the spots on the ceiling,

for the vein of my neck

pops and dances

to the rhythm of the shadows on the wall.

I can feel the pressure

in my lower abdomen

the ache for release.

And still

I just lie there.

I think I smell something,

but I’m not sure.

The hairs in my nostrils

are of a distant border.

My ears are tender

and my tongue heavy.

I am dressed in the softest silk,

the milky white texture

insufferable

against the indifference to colours within.

My locs seem intertwined

with the bedposts.

They trail

like a secret

of the deadliest nature.

My lashes fail to flutter on command.

I am, for lack of a better word,

a bondwoman.

I see a blueprint of a city

from the corner of my eye.

It witnesses a land

I once had been.

The city is patterned

by the constellations.

It bears homage

to the heavens

and the galaxies in between.

A lash moves

because I will it so.

A mouse crawls

and chews on a lock.

At first I squirm,

but then I realise

it chews to release

each and every loc untied

until there is movement

and circulation.

My nape responds in turn,

left to right,

upwards and downwards.

The sheets move.

They seem to come together,

rolling into a ball

and situating themselves

just right at my spine.

I am elevated.

My hands move

because I will it so.

I am sitting now.

I look out the window.

I see a figure

standing in the garden.

She calls out my name.

I stand up

and walk out the room.

__Laurel