An older woman like me inserts
a key card into a cube.
But the door to her hotel room
will not open.
Mine will.
I pull back the curtains,
see overcast skies.
The ocean lures me.
A long time ago, at age 35,
I broke down.
I was drowning in despair.
I took a deep dive,
headed all the way down
to the bottom of life’s ocean floor
to heal from childhood trauma,
including sexual abuse.
Tossed here and there, I
no longer wanted
closed doors,
where broken seashells cut to my core.
Through the decades, the waves crashed.
Would the currents stabilize me,
nurture new life between the surface
and the deep ocean?
Staying in recovery, I changed—gained
wavelengths, wind speed, and new direction.
Wind breath lifted me, carried
dead cargo into the sea.
Healing from trauma is a long-hard thing.
Now, nearly 70, I visit the ocean.
My fragmented seashells restored,
I am transforming into new patterns,
opening doors.
I watch the points of the crested waves sparkle
in the night. They shine even brighter in the darkness.
I return to my hotel room.
I see the older woman I saw
earlier in the day, now standing
at her door, ready to enter.
She says, “I had the wrong room.”
-Karen Carter
Karen Carter is a poet, writer, and educator. With a B.A., M.Div. and PhD, she teaches English and Creative Writing. Her full-length poetry collection, Deep Dive, (Querencia Press 2024), includes poems previously published in Tiny Seed. She lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. For more information, visit www.KarenCarterPoetry.com
Related
