Shame is shit
From toddlerhood we are taught
to hold it, control it
to flush it into oblivion
Yet, try as we might
we are never free of it
Shame is contagious
It is passed down, parent to child
in cutting words and
explosions of rage
and some shamed children
desperate to reclaim their worth
humiliate smaller victims
spitting names that become
barnacles on the soul
Shame is inherited
through perennial generations
the gene that keeps on giving
a legacy of never enough
How much of our finite lifeblood
is spilled on fighting and striving
to prove that little voice
the echo from long ago
finally
once and for all
wrong
Even if we hide it away
in a plastic bag within a box
far back in the corner
of a closet shelf
in a rarely visited room
its power is not diminished
It only finds new ways
to jerk our strings
snaking through vents to
provoke odd overreactions
that puzzle and upend
Shame will persist
It takes the courage
of a spelunker
to go within
to find the bag
within the box
to expose it
to the light, the air
to cup it tenderly
in our hands
and extend to it
the paradox of love
to weep the unwept tears
to trace its provenance
and at last in the skin
of the adult in the room
to forgive the shamers
for the sake of their
own wounds
For there is in the earth
an everyday miracle
a mysterious alchemy
in which dung makes
the richest compost
and grows a garden of
sweet and generous beauty
that fattens our withering soul
and maybe even blesses
a lonely world
And that is
the only real
redemption
by Celeste Boudreaux, March 2023
