Catharsis D’Être

By Amina Castronovo

Discussed: difficult topics surrounding mental health

This poem is dedicated to “re-becoming” during the healing process.

It follows a narrator torn between acknowledging the truths of their past and growing through honoring honesty and dishonesty.

You knew from my birth that I would be taken. 

I’ve looked for the bird,
The “tiger place.”
I remember the ache so clearly, but
When I get hungry enough, what do I see?
All I’ve found is the cenotaph of my past selves 
Who couldn’t re-become anymore,
Who disintegrated into sightless ghosts 
Overcome with the haunting that is eternal knowing 
Of the molting self— 

I am the most sensitive person I know. I am the most dramatic. I am the most caring. I am the most intuitive. I am the most loving. I am the most passionate. I am the most. I am I am I am—

I can’t rest.

sometimes i get a terrible feeling
like i died a while ago
and i'm only realizing it now. 
perhaps i was just born,
but i—
i am exhausted from the 
sound of my silence,
the constant 
Rage, Terror, and Nothingness 
that is existing between life and death.

it whispers: 
after you have ruined yourself,
what will you become?
Please, just make me good!

For a moment I considered rebellion:
I could never go back. 
Those girls were from the bad old days. 
They gave me the knife and 
They told me

I died for a while but it didn’t work.
And that is why women are so dangerous.
That is why we have to have our feet bound,
That is why they broke me with my own tongue,
That is why they said not to commit suicide,
But to live hungry instead.

When I get hungry enough, then killing and falling are dancing too-
a masochism of hunger—
When eating can’t be a habit, then neither can seeing;
The knife twists and punctures my chest— 
A creeping, sour constriction snaking its way into my throat. 
Like a cat with an overdue hairball, 
I’m choking up everything—
the expectations of my father, 
the pressure to be perfect, 
and the reminders that my fire—the resistant ache within me— 
is a self-imposed purgatory.

“When you were little, all you had to say was ‘I’m not a bad girl,’ 
and you could make yourself cry,” well
Being bad will kill me, but so will being good. 

After so long of hiding from the bird
I find myself trying to resurrect 
Its remains—
Who was I before I was taken?
Very early in my life it was too late,
I tried so hard to be free 
and that is why i am lost in the tiger place,
And that is why I am akin to no one. 

At first, my body didn’t know where I was. 

i looked at my neck—
Red teeth crevices, 
Bruises welting from mortality’s climax-
and i wanted to cry.,
i stared at my body 
and i was horrified by what it had done, 
what it had consumed, 
who it had consumed— 
What has it become!,
and how can a place that feels like home push me further from myself?

Alas, one day may my people understand the resemblance 
so I can return to them. 
May my chest and throat return to me
So that I can scream at those who witnessed my creation,
Sitting back and watching the world unravel, revolving—
“Revolution!”— 
Naming it makes it seem too small. It is infinite,
Like the first orgasm
a womb 
blood on a newborn 
a knife 
.the end of the fucking world.

so we burn. it is unifying and catastrophic and the only real thing we’ve ever felt.

Now that I’ve returned to the tiger place
I am watching the centuries pass in a moment 
because suddenly I understand time,
I know what the ghosts were whispering all along.
Perhaps I see two birds in their consecutive moments,
Holding up the well I tried to drown myself in
So that a catharsis of my reflection stares back at me:

“Which would you rather be? A ghost who is constantly wanting to be fed? Or nothing?”

Nothing!,
Always nothing.
Yet I am the most everything person I’ve ever met and I,
I’m tired of the tigers,
Of being the taken one.
I can never find the fucking bird
So I pretend that everything has wings 
Because turns out,
I’m not as strong as you raised me to be. 
I can lead everyone into battle

except myself and i will
drink myself into oblivion 
before i learn anything from you.

But
I know how to sit in my vulnerability because it makes me stronger.
I know when I need to write like I know when I need to drink water. 
I know how to make eye contact while being intimate, even if it lasts forever. 
And I know when my soul is screeching for the tiger place,
It screams at me through an etching surfacing on my skin:

just two black strokes—
The bird.

*Note to reader: All bolded text is from “The Woman Warrior” and “No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston.

Process

The process began after I read “The Woman Warrior” and “No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston in my Asian American Literature class. Although some of the literary elements are subject to criticism, the characters resonated with me, especially during this period of growth after Covid. I took lines from both literary pieces and worked it into a personal poem. I find myself coming back to this piece, not just for revisions, but because it is brave in its voice and doesn’t ask the reader to be perfect. Instead, it demands that growth and healing be recognized as a cycle with time.