Can your sensitivity allow you to know things that should be impossible?
All extremely sensitive person perceives things that others miss. We often talk about these things as physical sensations—the cushion of a step, the exhausted grunt of a hard-working man—but they are just as often intangible. Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) pick up on mood, intent, and sometimes secrets that were meant to remain hidden.
This experience weaves through the lines of this wonderful poem by Catherine Reid Day, as well as through the seasons of her life. In it, Day describes how his sensitivity has allowed him to know things that should be impossible, and how it has been an endless source of guidance—coming whether you ask for it or not, but often when it’s most needed.
This is only the second poem we’ve written on Highly Sensitive Refuge, but it speaks to the most misunderstood part of the sensitive soul. If you’re a highly sensitive reader yourself, I think you’ll find it incredibly familiar—and more than a little validating. – Andre Solo, editor
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Moving Souls Over Theseholes
Catherine Reid Day
I.
In August 1952, my
mother with polio
he was lying next to a woman
in an iron lung.
Relentless pressure
felt it in the womb.
Automated breathing
in the common hospital room.
He betrayed
my mother delivered me
months later
in isolation
he was convinced that I had arrived
with a special purpose.
I caught my mother’s father’s last heartbeat
before he flew away
out my attic window
rubbing a stem of the oak tree
pinching the rest of his hard life.
He would leave it to me
take care and carry on.
I didn’t understand why
he refused
to answer my childish demands.
I just wanted him to wake up.
I was four years old.
Ghosts visit me in every bedroom I’ve lived in.
He was the first to ask me to visit his soul
over the threshold?
II.
I was 15 when I was a red-haired man
during a hellish journey
my parents were away.
He jumped out at my pinkness
he decided to amplify what he thought
obsessed.
Dizzy head
I slapped him
my narrow bed a
blue carpet.
I imagined
turned into shark infested waters at night.
I don’t remember his name anymore.
III.
Loud sawing sound
the London telephone
interrupted my dream.
Wakes me up at midnight.
He announced the suicide of my friend’s brother.
I never met him, but I already knew who died.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “It happened with a shotgun.”
What should I do about it?
Or for his grieving brother?
I was 20 years old.
ARC.
Buying a place to live with my darkly cynical husband
I spotted the stucco house in the town I now call mine.
I had an urgent feeling that this house was for us.
He has good bones.
Art deco plaster ceiling and wide windows
attracted me.
I couldn’t get it out of my head.
I wanted that house.
It didn’t hold the same pull for him.
Trouble started right away.
I woke up every night
always staring at the ceiling fan
installed.
I would moan. “Leave me alone.
Stop bullying me.”
No one that I saw was floating there.
Just a fan.
Months. Years. This awakening and protest.
My husband left with his lover
He proudly wears the badge of his Harvard scholarship.
I stayed and talked to the walls.
Then I found out who owns the house
way ahead of me.
A thug named Leon.
He is a known bad man.
She and one of her daughters
they were all kidnapped
from the house.
How many homes
survived multiple kidnappings?
He drove head-on into the wall
and left sins behind
he couldn’t count
or redeem.
V.
My baby was only one
when he started talking to the ceiling.
Oh no, I thought.
You won’t disturb the baby either.
The exorcist said it took me a long time to contact him.
and when he did he said:
“I don’t want to do an interview.”
“I can knock it down,” he advised.
“But you can do it yourself.
You remind me of someone he loved.
He loves love in your home.
He promises not to disturb the baby.
i played my part
he nudged Leon reassuringly.
You did bad things. It’s okay.
But you can’t stay here.
Please move on.
Good souls are waiting for you.
You are not all the bad things in your life.
I must have discussed it with him.
It doesn’t bother me anymore.
VI.
I get warnings.
Warnings.
A voice in my head while driving.
“Don’t stay in this lane. Go ahead and cross.”
I’m changing lanes on the highway
and the driver speeding in the wrong direction simply missed me.
I drive through the chaos of vehicles
they stopped sharply.
After she gets home safely, I unbuckle my little girl
from his car seat.
Later that night I watched the local TV news
I will find out the end of the story.
The police chased a stolen car.
The stolen car hit a man and killed him
in the lane I was in seconds earlier
I changed lanes.
Now I often drive on that highway and
sometimes
count the seconds
between the warning words
and where was i
when the getaway car
crushed him.
VII.
Or the warning.
Before we took the train from Nice to Paris.
November 13, 2015
Terrible.
He urges me to be careful.
For what?
Vigilance.
Hours later after our walk along the Seine
I lay awake in our hotel room
my husband and daughter are sleeping next to me.
Sirens tore through the night.
So many sirens.
My phone started ringing on the nightstand.
Messages from home.
“Are you in Paris?” are you okay?”
In the dark I reached for the remote control and turned on the French news.
The terrorists are just two blocks away in a coffee shop.
And a football stadium.
And the Bataclan.
Dead bodies in shootings, drinks floating around
to crush out of hand
on the floor.
We were sheltered from the slaughter,
yet so close.
Vigilance.
My dread
premonition of ghosts.
VIII.
I read somewhere that with all physical adventures
there is a possibility of loss.
That makes it an adventure.
Every spiritual adventure has only gain.
So all physical adventures are really spiritual.
Maybe that’s what my mother thought she knew
locked in labor pains,
set me free
who you thought was special
into this life.
what am i here for
Moving souls across thresholds.
Now you’re wondering
what tempts me
on my own way
to my other side?
Catherine Reid Day is a poet, essayist, psychologist, storyteller and founder of Storyslices LLC. He adapts his story-based identity development method to the upcoming book Identity, Desire, and Desire: The Urgency of Who You Are.
