The half-mast flag stood proud though inconvenient.

Barely noticed through stuffed open mouths and wasted food.

Only a two-fists-bite night for this good girl.

Tell the world that you’re winning, loving life.

Unspread legs now battered against the bars

Of another prison, even more unbearable.

 

Scrape to find numbing at the bottom of the pit.

Sit in the back of the taxi, spinning then weeping

As the neighbour’s children arrive home again and again.

Clutch the knitted jacket made with SO MUCH LOVE,

Never to be warm.  Your house holds nothing of value in its stone walls.

Go play your video games while small voices echo in the spare womb.

 

They’ve all cut the line so pick your mild poison and try to

Harm first.  Stand in the middle , surrounded

by the murder of cawing crows,  circling

Only for you to take your inevitable place.

Go quietly.  Come along now. Glimpse first sight of

The wolf that you said you’d keep from the door.

 

Bear down to get this over with.  You just have to ask

Why not?  “You would have made….” A What?

While you interlope other families.  They wouldn’t have

Turned out like that.  Only asking for their own comfort.

Pet mother?  Reality: her own mother forgotten.  Born

To the dead in a bin.  Yes I’d love to see more wedding pictures

And talk of other ways of birthing though not chosen.

 

As insides twist and crawl, trying to escape the anguish.

No, it isn’t a bump you’re patting excitedly.  IT. WILL. NEVER. BE.

You who will will never know what to say or do.

You will hold for too long, grasp at air they think you shouldn’t take.

While they loudly whisper, because it isn’t normal.

It must have been your fault because there’s “..nothing

Like your own family” she squeezed out, not unhelpfully.

 

Through always some unmasked lack of interest.  Though better

Than the cruel words.  Just that one dear friend who understood

Gently lent me space and said it would be ok.

As I bled out the rivers you were to float in on.  Dreamt of

Your sweet breath.  Beautiful golden boys who

Talked and laughed.  Beholded such joy flowing forth

Constantly surprising us with its purity.

 

Girls carrying bunches of ancestral healing.

Woven crowns of perfect-ribboned plaits and fringes

That swept away the debris of SO MANY YEARS.  Lost.  Wasted.

Put the story books back on the shelf.  Just sell them.

They won’t be needed or shared.  It’s too late.

No worthwhile tales to pass down now.  Erase.  Delete.

 

Said goodbye and how very sorry I am to the names

In the stream at the bottom of another unmanageable life.

“May you be further blessed.”said the stranger

Who saw easily and yet still hoped, for you that

You would somehow have a life of less grief

That you would finally find what had always been lost.

Mandy Harket

Photo by Hailey Kean on Unsplash