So, what do you know now?

I have retold my story like a skipping stone

over tea and untouched tissue boxes

and two glasses of Terre di Faiano.

I have spilled shame over terracotta tiles,

become too trusting under dusky tangerine skies

and treaded water while bearing the weight of leaden limbs.

I have spoken these words

into helplines from home,

tapping my crisis into the phone

and weakly admitting myself

to strangers. I have found myself

confessing, breaking open, telling volunteers

how I feel: hopeless, unsafe, uncertain,

alone.

I have revisited and re-lived and revived the worst night

in police stations, in doctors’ offices, in friends’ kitchens,

in emergency rooms.

I have confronted a world of

flashbacks and nightmares

while reclining in therapists’ armchairs

and, more recently, perched on the edge

of my own bed, facing myself in weekly video calls -

by far the most comfortable location

to fall apart.

I have screamed for justice

on London streets with thousands surviving

beside me, angered by the hands that hurt us.

I have confided my trauma to nurses

from between starched white

impersonal sheets and open-backed gowns,

whispering truth into wounds

from hospital beds and exam tables,

feet in stirrups, coldly clinical.

So, when my therapist asks what I know now,

I tell her: my recovery is not linear. It is skipping stones;

it is the flat water, a mirror, disturbed by rippling impact;

it is the peace returning once the stones have sunk into silt.