When a student walks into your life to so share with you a secret, there is no telling what will come embedded in the story. The student starts to whisper the little tales gone by and suddenly a heavy load is place upon your shoulder. The story does unfold in pieces and in patches and then the client slows a while to wonder if to break the secret open. There is often such a struggle on weighing the pros and cons but when you live the patience and when you apply the art and craft of psychotherapy the client finds release. On helping a certain client to break her silence I ended up penning the process in the following poem:

Don’t Break the Silence?
If you take that chance and break that silence
The river starts to run
And if you take that chance and keep your silence
The water course is blocked
Here comes the choices problem
There goes the decision trick
It matters not which way you turn
The candle has to burn

Should you just take one small, slim chance!
And open up that simmering wound
You may indeed be setting free
A choking, broken heart and mind
You’ll melt away the grime
That time and tide had laid upon
Your shoulders bent and low
Perhaps you’ll take that chance

Well, if you’re so scared to ‘bungee jump’
To venture out, increase the ‘pump’
Your heart will still be murmuring loud
In the midst of a silent crowd
For faces have a way to show
The trembling of a troubling heart
Get up, stand up, and start to grow
This move to me is smart

What if you never again grow?
What if you never get to glow?
What if you never get the chance?
What if you never get a glance?
Of the ‘You’ that’s dying inside?
Of the ‘You’ that’s crying deep inside
Of the ‘You’ that’s groaning, moaning
What if you never find ‘You’?

There you are somewhere between
Breaking the silence and squeezing the silence
The moment that you open the ‘Pandora’s Box’
You let lose all the skeletons living there
And skeletons are animals that scare

You have heard of the ‘Devil and the deep blue sea’
Do, you are damned, and do not, you are damned
Well, it seems to me that you must find
A way to take a chance to dance yourself from this
Take a leap, open the box, and expose those threatening skeletons

Open up, just open up, and open your Pandora’s Box’
I know you will find someone to come and shatter all the bones
And when the bones are broken down to pieces and to dust
You‘ll find a new beginning there to chart a better course
That box! It must be opened.

I set one day and wondered, about the closed Pandora’s Box’
Those thoughts in there are bleeding you; bleeding you to death
You walk around your face so sad; it seems you’re going mad
The skeletons are peeping through your life, your thoughts, and your words
And day by day I ask myself, ‘How do the skeletons feel?’

There was a time I thought that I
Could protect those skeletons
One day I found myself just walking upside down
I made a flip and I did the switch
Then the skeletons all dropped out

That was a great surprise for some
And just as they said, an angel came on board
They lifted me and protected me
And empowered me so fine
I am myself again. I am myself, again

I just want to say, that in my journey so far
Sometimes a monster comes and leaves a scar
And then that dreadful scar becomes a monster
That seems to multiply itself from hour to hour
You shower and that monster keeps itself inside
You scream and the monster takes you for a ride
I’m not a man that’s bent on doing crime
But, somehow, I have a plot this time

Just do this crime; don’t even call my name
Because I’m not trying to find for me some fame
The world must know I’m not for killing and stealing
But, enough is enough; it’s time to do the dealing
Kill that monster living so long inside you
Steal away to a brand new day and life, too
My plot is over; recover and soon discover
That monster was a hoax; the hell for you is over!!
Written by Anderson Antoine

Anderson Antoine is a counselor from Trinidad and Tobago. He lectures at the University of the Southern Caribbean, and owns the company ‘Anderson Antoine and Associates Professional Counseling Services’. At present he is deeply engaged in writing poetry.