On August eighth morning, heavy and green,
In Peru’s deep jungle, where few had been seen,
A bungalow waited, half shadow, half light,
Where rainforest breathed through the warm humid night.
Ludmila sat cross-legged on splintered wood floor,
Forty-eight years old, seeking something more.
A Russian-born mother, a wife far away,
She closed tired eyes, tried to drift and to pray.
But the forest was loud with its buzzing refrain,
Winged whispers and insects like taps on her brain.
And Ivan, her friend from a life overseas,
Clinked cups in the kitchen while brewing his teas.
He was thirty-eight, Ukrainian, kind,
A fellow retreat-goer, similar mind.
No romance between them, no secret disguise,
Just two weary souls seeking clearer skies.
They’d met on these journeys, these pilgrim-like stays,
Chasing calm moments, escaping loud days.
Retreats in the wild where the world falls apart,
To stitch new perspective straight into the heart.
These weren’t just vacations or silence alone,
But ceremonies ancient, in jungle full-grown.
Ayahuasca waited in kettles and steam,
A powerful potion that bends thought and dream.
Some called it healing, a soul’s deep restart,
For wounds seen and unseen, for mind and for heart.
Ludmila felt lighter when life pressed too tight,
A pause from the duties that swallowed her sight.
Ivan felt similar, worn down by years,
Seeking relief from unspoken fears.
And that morning they stood at a dangerous line,
Between sacred tradition and personal pride.
For the rule was repeated, strict, heavy, and plain:
“Never drink ayahuasca alone in the rain.
A shaman must guide you through visions untold,
Through shadows that flicker and spirits that scold.”
But confidence whispered, We’ve done this before,
We know these sensations, these myths, these doors.
So quietly, secretly, thinking they’re wise,
They broke ancient law under watchful green skies.
Ivan poured mugs as the kettle fell still,
Steam curled like a warning they chose to ignore at will.
They drank, then lay down where the floor met their backs,
Eyes closed, unaware of the sanity cracks.
Hours rolled on in the thick jungle air,
While elsewhere the guide led calm chants in a prayer.
Then a scream cut the quiet, raw terror unleashed,
From a staff member frozen, her breath tightly seized.
The director ran fast, heart pounding with dread,
Toward the small bungalow, toward fear and toward red.
One glance told him all, no words had to say,
The rule had been broken—and paid for that day.
For ayahuasca opens the mind’s hidden gate,
Where visions feel real and illusion is fate.
Some trips bring insight, reflection, release,
Others drag terror that never finds peace.
Without guiding hands, the mind turns on itself,
Fear dressed as truth, delusion as help.
And Ivan had fallen into that dark well,
Where nightmares wear reason and reason rebels.
In his fractured vision, the woman he knew
Was possessed, overtaken by something untrue.
To “save” her, he acted inside that false fight,
Lost fully in terror, divorced from the light.
Metal struck flesh in a storm without sense,
Then steel found its way past the final defense.
When the staff member looked, she screamed at the sight:
Ivan stood smiling, unmoored from his mind.
The floor told a story no words could repair,
A life torn apart in that bungalow lair.
Ivan sat nearby, eyes vacant and wide,
Still lost in the trip he could not outride.
When the visions dissolved and reality bled,
He confessed to the horror his hands had been led.
Arrested, imprisoned, the truth standing bare,
He now serves his sentence in Peru’s cold care.
And the jungle still hums, unchanged by the pain,
While a lesson lies heavy beneath falling rain:
Some doors aren’t meant opened by ego or pride,
For without a true guide, the soul has no side.