And yet, she was now abundantly failing at being good. The blackness was deafening. Curtains closed. She didn’t even curl on her bed: she crouched in the corner, by the wardrobe and the waste-paper bin. She’d tried so hard to be good, but it didn’t do any good.

She was almost a suicide.

A depressive, certainly. And this story could so easily have a very sad and short ending. But the doctor had one idea left to try. She handed the young woman a white sheet of A4 paper. Sarah’s eyes were too worn and pained to read. The doctor shone a torch light on the smooth paper, onto the black printed symbols. Sarah looked at her blankly. The doctor proceeded to read the words to her, in a lullaby voice. Sarah heard nothing, but her eyes followed the delicate lines the torch drew through the darkness.

A new silence opened out. The despair was still there, but was now tinged with curiosity, like a luminescence edging the wings of a dying butterfly. There was a vague promise, like a half formed rainbow hovering between exhalations.

‘Would you like me to read it again?’

Even though Sarah’s tongue was chalk, she dug up the word ‘yes’ from the recesses of the dark folds of her heart. The doctor read –

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Every day for a month, the doctor read the poem to the young woman, and every day for a month, the curtains receded – a millimetre at a time, her stomach accepted another morsel – a bite at a time, her body relaxed – a muscle at a time, her mind grew an image of a door opening slowly, onto green meadow full of buttercups. Her heart started to unfold. She began to let waves of hope lap at the shore of her mind.

The following month, the doctor brought Sarah pen and paper, and asked her to continue writing from the lines: Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

“Don’t leave me,” Sarah pleaded, afraid to be alone with her own words. “But don’t watch me,” she said.

“Where would you like me to sit?”

“At my desk. I prefer to pillow-write.” The doctor nodded, handed Sarah a hardback book of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings, and seated herself quietly, looking through the ruler length gap of daylight between the curtains, to the house opposite, with a pink geraniums in the window.

Sarah bit the end of the biro for a moment, her hand shaking. Then hesitatingly wrote: My despair, my despair is...

She hadn’t realised she’d spoken out loud, as she wrote it.

“Is it black?” the doctor asked.

Sarah shook her head. The pen dipped to the paper of its own volition: My despair is grey, like a cloud that never rains. My despair is the air that nobody breathes.

She stopped and looked up. Her brow beaded in sweat, her hand shaking even more. “I wrote something,” she whispered. “I said something.”

“Do you want me to read them?” Sarah stuck the piece of paper out in front of her as if it was on fire.

The doctor held the fragile paper with the dangerous words on, in her steadying hand, and looked Sarah in the eyes. “It’s safe, Sarah. Your words are breathing. They have space to be heard now. Welcome to the family of things.”

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.

Lines in italics taken from the poem‘Wild Geese’Mary Oliver