once i got a sea urchin spine stuck in my hand. it wasn’t one of those thin ones that break up and kind of disappear over time, this was a chunky one, kind of like a grain of rice, and it went deep. it hurt when it happened and when it healed i could tell there was something still in there, but i didn’t do anything about it. i thought about soldiers with bullets lodged in them for years while they were otherwise healthy and i felt some solidarity.

it lived there, in my hand, for a while. i don’t remember how long. i could push on it and kind of feel it in there. i was even a little proud of my benign underwater battle wound. but then, over time, it started to look different. i watched it and could see the spine coming closer to the surface until, one day, months later, i pulled it out. no drama, but kind of astounding in the way that when something weird happens to your body your mind is blown even though you know weird things happen to other people all the time. it came out - just like that. when it was ready. or probably when i was ready.

and i think about that spine sometimes. it’s not just sea urchin spines that come to the surface when they are ready, it’s other things, too. like trauma and truths and fear and sadness. they disappear in us, and we think we’re done. and then one day we start crying for no reason, or we can’t sleep, or we can’t get out of bed. or we’re awfully angry. and maybe then we realize that there is something trying to come to the surface - to be felt. that’s usually what it is. maybe something we weren’t able to fully feel or understand when it happened - maybe we weren’t safe, or capable, or strong, but now we are. or maybe it’s a big thing that keeps coming to be felt, over and over and over. or maybe it’s a change that’s asking to be made, but it’s not clear and feels scary. it’s weird and uncomfortable and inconvenient to have this thing and these feelings bubbling up, and we want them to go away.

but then i think about the sea urchin spine, and it helps. just let it come out, i think. i can feel something in me that needs to come out. i’m often not sure what it is, or how to do it, but i think i’m probably going to feel better after it does. maybe i’ll need some help. maybe i’ll have to do something i don’t want to do. maybe relief will come slowly. but maybe it will be easier than i think. and maybe i’m ready. 

 Let us look for secret things
somewhere in the world,
or on the blue shore of silence
or where the storm has passed,
rampaging like a train.
There the faint signs are left,
coins of time and water,
debris, celestial ash
and the irreplaceable rapture
of sharing in the labour
of solitude and the sand.
Pablo Neruda