But she doesn’t understand.

She followed all the rules. She sat down when ordered, stood up when instructed, handed in all her homework on time throughout the school years, she spoke when spoken to, never got in a car with strangers, she obeyed and honoured her parents and teachers and cowered in the face of peer-rage and buried the word ‘rebellion’ deep in the back of a dusty dictionary. The teenager years passed her by – a cauldron of endless skies of grey grief after her father’s funeral and hiding in pockets of black from the raging red spots of her mother’s grief.

She was good. She was very very good. She did everything she was told. But now at the age of 22, school far behind, A-levels and degree in the loaded rucksack at her back, a world of closed doors in front of her. She’d ended up in this job in the finance office of a large, well-established company, pension included, four weeks holiday, not a graduate’s wage, but lucky to have a job – so her mother would say. But the job wasn’t a job at all: there were hardly any tasks to be carried out. It was an hour a day job, not a nine to five job. Why had they even advertised it? Filing invoices and a bit of training on their computerised database. Lots of tea-making. She was good at tea-making. She was good at filing. She was good on computers. But she had one failing: she was not good at having nothing to do.

Her muted gifts for language and teaching, her mouth sewn shut, like Philomela, her imagination closed up between tight columns of numbers, forever adding up and taking away, but never multiplying, never flying into tangent sunsets, never seeing into the heart and mind of others, helping others’ pens to fulfil their potential to grow. Instead, her brain was numbed by blank walls with no pictures and a world of people heavy with spreadsheets of numbers, burdened by the need to turn hours into money into food, to themselves and their families.

The day came when she was called into the Supervisor’s office. For A Word.

The supervisor warned her, that she was reliant upon him for a future reference and it had been noted that she spent way too much time away from her desk.

Away from her desk.

Yes – making cups of tea for everyone, or filing, or in a cubicle of the ladies’ toilets, eyes closed, wishing she was somewhere else, trying to remember... She thought of far-off mountains that must exist, she dreamed of humans heart-talking, which must be possible somewhere, she longed for dancing words that rumbaed and salsaed through your feet, swayed your mind into open horizons where birdsong made sense and the body quivered with some unknown delirium, like Vienetta ice cream soothing the tongue at the end of a steaming hot day. Somewhere, deep deep inside the well of her being, she knew these things must exist.

But caught in the clinical cubicle of a large office block, the illusion of reality quashed the flame of her soul into some tiny corner of a black labelled shoe box, filed on a shelf, between a million other black labelled shoe-boxes.

Away from her desk.

She did not point out to her supervisor that he had not given her any work to do; she did not point out to him that she’d finished her orderly filing; she did not remind him of the endless cups of tea she’d served him, black, strong, half a sugar, throughout that day and all the other days. She’d been told never to offend your supervisors, the Authority Figures, don’t talk back, don’t upset others – be good, be quiet, do as you’re told. And she did. And it was killing her.

The doctor said she was dying.

To be continued in part 2 herePoetry Healing: Persephone Darkness part 2 of 2

Persephone Darkness is an original work by published author and poet Bethany Rivers

Bethany offers a range of Poetry Healing Experiences at Centre for Integral Health Shrewsbury.

For more information on Bethany's work or to contact her for details of how you can take part in individual or group poetry healing sessions, see her webpage on the Centre website.