What if the only way out isn’t up, but in? This piece was born from descent, not the kind you choose with clarity, but the kind that chooses you. The kind you’re pulled into by the ache of survival, by the silent scream that doesn’t stop even after the pain has passed, by the moment your name no longer fits the shape your life demands.

Before you hear these words, I invite you to ask yourself: Where have you been pulled beneath the surface of your own life? What fragments of you have you buried, silenced, or burned to keep others warm? And if you had to meet that you that waits in the deep – would you recognise their rage as sacred? Would you remember what you came for? After you’ve absorbed these words, I’ve left you with more reflection questions at the end of this post – my real gift to you.

This is not a poem about healing, it’s about remembering. It’s about the kind of power that isn’t earned, but reclaimed – thread by thread, wound by wound, and with the help of the unseen. This is my story, but as a spiral, a map, and a mirror.

The Spinner’s Hook

The surface could not hold me.
The current did not sink me.
The rage tide failed to break me.
I spiralled into death, voluntarily.
I did not enter with a rod,
nor patience,
peace or perfect poses.

I did not come with bait.
I came bleeding.
A line spun from a scream
I had buried in my own abyss.

I came torn,
threadbare from lifetimes
and brutal chapters
that nearly took me
in the way a soul
can die,
long before the body.

My blood still bore the scent
of old ones who whispered
in the aether with thunder.

Something primal spun
from the roar stuck in my chest.
Not burley – but memory.
Not hope – but fury
disguised as prayer.

I cast myself
into the dark.
Without permission.
Without a name.
And the dark answered.
Not with echo, but with eyes.
Glowing eyes.

The remnants of fire,
etched into my palms still
where the old gods
touched me in silence.
My permanent reminder
of what was once whispered
“there is more, so much more”.

The water didn’t ask why.
It pulled, ferociously,
like it knew exactly
what had fractured
and where I’d left the pieces.

It was a grave
and a womb.
It was the place
where names rot,
so something real
can rise.

And I went under.
I let myself fall.
Unclenching,
unspinning the lies
I stitched into my own skin.
Like grief does.
When silence
is all that you trust.

Down there…
I found her.
Adorned in everything
I’d tried to hide.

The one I’d buried.
The one who held
rage like a guarded relic.
Not like those of worldly treasures,
the kind displayed in glass
but the kind sealed in lead.
Volatile, sacred,
and taken for granted…
until it detonates.

She did not flinch.
She opened her mouth,
and the old language poured out
the kind that cracks mirrors
and wakes bones.

Something stirred then,
not within me,
but around me.

The dark had not been empty.
It had witnesses.
Old ones,
ancient as root and rune.
Watching
from the edges of the void.
Waiting for my signal
to begin the rite.

I listened.
I wept.
I bled copper
into the spiral
as the elementals came:

Wind – to stir the story.
Flame – to cauterise the severed self.
Stone – to give me spine again.
Sea – to baptise me…
not as saint,
but as sovereign.

She looked at me
like I’d kept her waiting.
And I had. 
She met me with a statement
that still hid a question
“How could you pretend,
I didn’t exist!”

But in the deep,
she wasn’t angry,
any more.
She was ready
and ravenous.

And when the spirits came
I watched them stitch me
backward and inward,
until I was no longer
trying to escape the dark
but remembering,
I was born of it.

They reeled her in.
Slowly.
Spinning something sacred.
Birthing what cannot be undone.
Thread tightens truth.
Knot by knot, I remembered.
Each turn of tension,
a reckoning.
Each new beginning starting,
with a wound made honest.

I spun her shadow into shape.
Wove our madness into map.
And let her scream
thread into anthem.

And when we rose,
I was not the same.
I brought no trophy.
No applause.
Only breath.
Only fire.
And memory
of what it cost
to come home to my name.

They say you fish to feed.
But I went to remember.
And I came back whole
not because I was spared,
but because I did not break.

I pulled myself
from my own abyss.
And the catch
wasn’t prey. It was power.

And the beginning
wasn’t a sunrise
but a descent
lit from within.

I did not leave the dark behind.
I carry it,
tender, watchful and
woven through my name.

The thread is still spinning.
I was not designed
to fear where it leads
because I am the echo.

The descent was not an end,
but a beginning built in shadow.
It became a doorway.
When I walked out,
I was forged and fanged.
I was crowned in ash.

I rose, not cleansed,
but complete.
The darkness is my witness,
that lights my path.

Because I became the fire
that dark often drowns.

Closing thoughts

What did this poem stir in you? A flicker of recognition, discomfort, or longing? Let that be your invitation. You don’t need to name it yet. You don’t need to make sense of what it wants. But you can meet it with presence. Below are a handful of questions, not to answer right away, but to carry with you. Let them unravel in their own time, like thread turning to shape. Let them lead you to what waits in the deep.

  1. Where have I felt myself unravel and did I fight it or follow it?
  2. What parts of me have been buried for the sake of survival, acceptance, or peacekeeping?
  3. What have I mistaken for weakness that might actually be power I haven’t learned to hold yet?
  4. Have I ever heard an internal “NO!” that was louder than any external “yes”?
  5. What does sacred rage feel like in my body? What has it tried to protect?
  6. Is there a version of me I left behind and would I recognise them if they surfaced today?
  7. What beliefs have been stitched into my skin that are no longer mine to carry?
  8. What would it mean to be witnessed in the dark without needing to explain it away?
  9. When did I last feel the presence of something ancient, watching, guiding, or remembering me?
  10. What part of me has been spinning in silence, waiting to be heard?
  11. Can I begin again not from light, but from what I’ve carried through the dark?
  12. What is the cost of coming home to myself and am I willing to pay it?
  13. What parts of yourself have you buried, and what would it take to unearth them?
  14. Can you identify a moment when you felt the pull of a deeper, perhaps unsettling, truth?
  15. How do you perceive the balance between sacredness and volatility within your own journey?

If you enjoyed this post or wish to explore these themes further please check out these posts:

Blessed Be xo