I Am Nigredo

Healing does not begin with hope. It begins with truth, the raw recognition of what has been lost, denied, or forgotten. This piece speaks from the voice that waits beneath the collapse, the voice that honors the unmapped spaces inside us, and the difficult, sacred work of becoming real.

A poem in the voice of the first stage of transformation

I am not your enemy.

I am not your fall.

I am the floor beneath your forgetting

The moment when silence breaks its contract.

You were taught to build on names

that were not yours.

To speak a language that edits memory

into something manageable.

I remember what they made you forget.

I am not sadness.

I am not darkness.

I am clarity without comfort.

When you say

“I do not know who I am,”

I nod.

Finally.

You call it collapse.

I call it a beginning.

You call it shame.

I call it unlearning the lie.

I do not bring light.

That comes later.

I bring what is left

when everything false burns.

You are not lost.

You are unmapped.

That is different.

Sit with me.

Name nothing.

Let the ashes settle.

Let the mirrors crack.

I will not heal you.

I will not lift you.

But I will tell you the truth.

And the truth

is the most sacred

place to begin.