When Home and Therapy No Longer Hold

The walls that once hummed with soft, familiar static—

 

the hallway’s sigh, the kitchen’s clatter—

now echo with a stranger’s footfall, a silence that presses

like a tide receding from its shore.

 

The therapist’s couch, that neutral plain of cushions,

was a map of safe coordinates:

“Speak,” she said, “and I will listen.”

But the words have turned to ash,

the listening ears to glass that shatters at the slightest tremor.

 

So where do you go when the anchors dissolve?

 

You step into the city’s underbelly, where neon flickers like an old heart.

You walk the cracked pavement that remembers the footsteps of the lost,

each crack a fissure in the world’s skin, a quiet invitation

to sit, to breathe, to rewrite the narrative of safety.

 

You find refuge in the hush of a forgotten library,

where dust‑laden tomes keep secrets tighter than any therapist’s notebook.

Pages turn, and with each rustle you hear a soft promise:

“Here you may be unmade, and remade, without judgment.”

 

You follow the river that runs past the industrial district,

its water a mirror that refuses to show the sky but reflects your own face.

In its current you learn that safety is not a place but a pulse—

the steady thrum of blood beneath bruised ribs, the rhythm that persists

even when the world’s walls crumble.

 

You sit beneath a lone oak in a park that no one tends,

its bark scarred by seasons, its roots tangled in the earth’s old stories.

There, the wind whispers: “You are a traveler, not a prisoner;

The ground beneath you is ever‑changing, but the sky remains.”

 

And in each of these wandering sanctuaries—streetlight, book, river, tree—

You discover that safety is a compass, not a destination.

It is the willingness to step into the unknown, to map the gaps

with your own steady hand, to carry the lantern of self‑compassion

 

until the world, however fractured, begins to feel a little less hostile,

and you, at last, can answer that quiet question:

 

Where can I feel safe again?