Poem: "Nementia"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls and posted as part of a swap with janetmiles. It belongs to the series A Poesy of Obscure Sorrows.


"Nementia"
the post-distraction effort to recall the reason
you're feeling particularly anxious or angry or excited,
trying to retrace the sequence of your thoughts
like a kid gathering the string of a downed kite


Everyone gets distracted sometimes
and loses their train of thought,
but finding it again is a skill.

You have to know yourself
and your mind and also
the pattern of your thoughts.

You have to practice remembering,
to build strength and resilience into
your memories so that you can
recognize them from any angle.

You have to think about thinking
and how it actually works, the way
it wends through your mind like
a trail through a dense forest.

Sometimes, you can pick up
the wisps of it after a distraction
and follow it back to where you left off.

Other times, you have to follow your feelings,
explore why you are experiencing this emotion
in this moment, to reach the root of it again.

Every time you get distracted, you have
an opportunity to practice these skills.

It doesn't matter whether a given topic
was particularly important or not.

It only matters that you practice,
practice, every chance you get

so you can recover the ones that are.

* * *

Notes:

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig, p. 48. Simon & Schuster, 2021.

This comes after "Emodox."

Comments

[thatjustwontbreak]

Beautiful! So smooth and well-paced.

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad you liked this. :D

[dialecticdreamer]

I think that my favorite part is the lovely new word introduced at the top of the poem. It pulled me right in, and the later descriptions wove a hammock so that I felt completely suspended in the idea.

Lovely work!

[kellan_the_tabby]

ahh yes, my VERY EXCELLENT TRAUMA RESPONSE, thanks brain, that's SO USEFUL

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Trauma is quantum. One of its most salient features is that it breaks the illusion of linear time, like a rip in a movie screen.

One of the best scenes in Star Trek Deep Space Nine is the wormhole aliens demonstrating that "Time is not linear. You exist here." The claim that it's a choice is false, but effect of being trapped in a moment of time is terribly real.

One of the most important ways to address trauma, therefore, is to position it on a personal timeline in the past -- to sequence it, file it, so that it becomes less prominent than the present. Healing is largely about repairing the illusion of linear time. One can pile newer, better memories over the trauma and while it doesn't go away, it becomes less prominent because now it can recede.

Or you can do the exact opposite: embrace the nonlinearity of time, in which the trauma is only a small part, because also extant are all the wonderful times and all the potential. Gain the ability to move through globular time, like learning to swim. You might cough and flail a lot at first, but you'll get the hang of it. Your soul remembers, because it's how souls navigate between lives.