Half-Eye

Written By Phillipa Joy - Psychotherapist

I begin to see with a half-eye

One shut and the other, shadowed

Just a crack

Enough to see

The crack in the hallway

Splitting the house in two

The crack in the ant hill

Spilling bites

The crack in the riverbed

Parching quickly and quietly

The crack of an electric cattle prod

Gun

Air rip of the steel gate

The crack in the windscreen

Splintering glass webs

The crack of the whip swing over and over

Under and under

Again and again

Crack, crack, crack

I can see too much through my cracked half-eye

I pull it, beg it, bully it, turn it inwards

The crack won’t close

I slump along with my half-eye

I see with a half-eye

The internal terraforming that terrors gave me

The gulf of longing that shaped me

The irreparable past seeping through the future

Shattered form and matter

Moving through the cracks

I see with a half-eye

The arc of a crack

The way a gaping rupture can fill, rise and swell

Slope, pendulate, spiral, seed

Ripen through deep time

The crack as moment, movement, compelling force

Tilting me, tilting us, towards something else

Refusing to allow us to remain certain of what we see

What we are

Of what is to come

I see more with my half-eye

How much more there is yet to come

Through the crack

The wisdom of a child who folds

Into themselves and beyond reach, for now

Guarded looks

Hunched shoulders

Braced fists

A careful, crafted smile and silence

The people and places we dream and then become

Seeing and holding with a heart cracked open

Tender cracks

Love

Weep into them

Breathe into them

Sow into them

Laugh into them

I can see so much through my cracked half-eye

I thank it, honour it, shelter it

Widen it

This poem offers a glimmer into some of the history of my way of seeing and relating to hardship, suffering and pain.

It is a beginning story, not the whole story, with more to come.

It is also the start of an invitation to an online module on the theme of ‘Rupture as Repair’.

Coming Soon.

From my Heart-Field to yours,

Phillipa Joy - Psychotherapist

I maintain a small private psychotherapy practice in South East Queensland, where I work closely with those who have experienced complex developmental, relational abuse and neglect. My practice is shaped by a commitment to being response-able to the legacies of harm carried through history, while nurturing ways of tending to relational care amidst today’s metacrisis.

With Masters qualifications in Psychotherapy and Narrative Therapy & Community Work, alongside two decades in not-for-profit, community, and private practice contexts, I bring both formal training and lived experience of walking alongside people impacted by profound harm.

My writing and therapeutic work seek to honour the complexity of suffering while opening space for care, connection, and transformation. I am indebted to a wide range of thinkers, practitioners, and artists across philosophy, literature, psychotherapy, and community work, whose insights continue to accompany and nourish my practice.

Next

I let it