Episode 31: The Invisible Safe House

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing as well as you can be today. This week’s poem and episode explore how to create a safe space in your mind—a place only for you. It also discusses how difficult this can be among so many other thoughts, distractions, and constant content consumption. The poem in the episode is a sestina, which includes a repetitive echo by using the same six end words in different combinations and orders. Our thoughts also create echos/repetition, so this episode can help us reclaim and create a healthy echo chamber in our mind. The poem allows us to unpack society’s sometimes invasive definition of safety and potentially brainstorm a new one. 

I’ll share it with you now:

Where can we be safe
when ceilings & walls won’t share?

Those in our own brain—not the boundaries of shelter

but the exponentially spreading Rubik's cube boxes—
apartments plugged with everything but joy.
Could we keep just one free? For love?

And by free I mean a tree home of love 

where warm ocean crests are cozy & safe

and where, long ago, the mountains peaked at joy;

when bridges are breakfasts in beds & share

blankets because not a thing fits into bottles & boxes.

Don’t let anyone else into this shelter

please. Shade your shelter

from folks, but infuse it with rememberings of love

& gently spill these from anything looking like boxes.

Make this place safe—

yours. No need to invite anyone in or share

a compass or colour-code to its joy.

Recall & name what brings you joy
when you’ve needed to not only shelter

to find it, but share

your location when what you needed was love

that didn’t force you to forget how to feel safe.
This is where containers can be kind boxes:

eight billion listening land boxes

of spiritual & ancestral joy

where emotions & sensations & thoughts are safe

space to rest, to be, to not have to try hard enough to shelter

and be free to both build this place & yield to it—bare in love

& only with yourself, share

& heal & share & heal & share.

Marinate with magic already there, unlike the other boxes. 

These bottomless floors—sand sinking with love

This breathful sky—scaling above stars of joy.

Everything fits in this soft, shapable shelter

without steel walls like a safe

because safety isn’t a synonym for sharing

our shelter’s location or the combination lock to our boxes

of all-embracing joy & love.

Breathe the words in. What do they make you feel or think? How did they connect with your senses? What colours or symbols did you notice? What meaning did you draw? Metaphors? Interpretations? Clarity? Messages?