Scar tissue

You wandered those streets alone

On the days you could not bear to go to school

How your lonely heart must have been aching

After your father died

And mother was left so alone with no support

You fell through a void

With no one to catch you

The nuns only abused you more

And used you for their purposes

She’s a great little ‘doer’ lets get her to clean for us

And so you did

But nothing can take the pain and anger that went deeper

Mum no wonder now you bull doze through

And judge the value of what money bought

As the primary thing

When you and Dad finally found security

Which came at such a price

Behind the mill your daughters play

But since they have fallen out of mind

When the devil comes to say

I want what is behind the mill

You agreed

When you were not valued truly due to emotional absence

You placed value in things that were not real

Only substitutes for love

How you must have suffered

When you saw them wheel your ravaged daughter past you

In the corridors of emergency

Her face and body torn apart

After the smash

You were not the one gone every weekend

You retreated to the garden

With your silent pain

While your daughter sat inside

Swallowing down the atmosphere

A black hole of emptiness you had left behind

I see it now

How captured I was

As I could not see it for years

And I would be the one

Fate asked to make sense of it

Now that I am free

In knowing why and how

There are only these tears of the collective

My sadness for what we lost

For the space of togetherness

That could never exist in that place of busy emptiness

Tears

For my beautiful sister that died

For my own inability to let go

Of something I had not yet digested

And so could not free

I see it all now

And my heart aches

You did your best

But it wasn’t enough

So even though you hurt me now Mum

I understand the how and why

The sadness you carry that you shut the door on

Saying “No, it isn’t like that”

To the one who truly understands

And I realise now that this sadness will always be

A large part of my soul

But that in feeling it there is space made

For the tangled mystery of wounding fate

That in scarring so deeply

Leaves an opening in the wounded places

Where beautiful flowers of understanding

Can grow

And yes even love

In the midst of all of that tragedy

Loss and pain