This Spring Feels Like Winter

There was a tang of whisky in the wood
Hills hung with cobwebs, mist around a church
Of the same stone as the watchers nearby.
I've seen you visit where bones were hid,
Someone should tell you to come indoors
But violets are blooming in the rain
Tending them keeps that strange light in your eyes.
Past summer's keeping, silver in the blood.

Not wanting it

This house is cold!

And I am still not quite right.

My dreams are disturbed, last night I could hear myself trying to yell in my sleep. It's weird when that happens. I was yelling 'Police, police!' But being asleep the sounds that come out are just bizarre, like having vocal chords made of wood, creaking away in full on spooky fashion. It has a touch of nightmare to it but I find it quite interesting nonetheless; I am asleep but at least partially conscious of what I'm doing, aware enough to understand that I am talking in said sleep, but not quite enough to realise that whatever I'm shouting at/for is therefore just a dream.

Ah, better, the house is warming up.

It's no surprise that the dreams come directly after the revelation that my attacker will be let out this year. I need to get back to the Liaison service about this stupid list of things he can/can't do, people he can't talk to, places he can't go, and I've lost the letter they sent me. Pah. It would be much more fun not to think about it at all, not least because it just challenges everything of higher principle within myself.

It is important to remember he has the right to live, to change and learn. If he is getting out, after the year's delay on his first release date, it probably means he is making a concentrated and successful effort to get over his drug habits, and I should be pleased for him, but animal me would just prefer him to be locked up until he dies. I don't need or want him to be tormented, vengeance is trivial. Still, in total honesty, him sitting in a cell off his head on heroin would suit us both very well. It's neither nice nor noble, and I would be ashamed of it had I not learned to treat my inner beasty with respect. Once he is out, I won't even try to stop my hypervigilance, and that's going to be bloody tiring; a lot of PTSD treatment is about trying to get you to accept you don't need to be watchful, that the circumstances will never occur again. The serviceman needs to realise he will never return to Vietnam/Iran/wherever; the attacked needs to realise theirs was a freak occurrence. The streets are innocent enough.

Problem is, it's not necessarily true, and the instincts that help one survive just kick in. All the reassurance in the world won't change that. I am not even sorry, this is just how it is.