Descent Into Dust.
Release Date: 23 March 2010
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Come in under the shadow of this red rock,

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

T.S. Elliot, The Wasteland (1920)

Images of shadow and dust—how these words shattered me when I read them in this recently published poem, penned by one who could never know my story.  Though the poet was a stranger, his verse took me in its fist and cast me on a rushing flood tide into the past, back to all which I have held in secret for this long time.

With these words beckoning, rattling around in my brain and giving me no peace (I will show you fear in a handful of dust), I cannot resist the pull of memory.  And though it is many decades later, it all comes back to me; back even to those early days, when the terror was new and I was dangerously untrained.  When I was young and did not yet know I had a secret.

And I think it is time.  I feel it is.  Time to tell my story.  A truly remarkable story…