Carry

I carry deep inside me

The trauma and sadness of a war

I never fought

A terrible onslaught

Rising like a monster

Out of a sea of peace

It left its mark

Sounding out its terrifying call

Across generations

Revelations come on Saturday mornings

Trauma shock is here

I cry and struggle

Within the buzzing cascade of fear

And terrible pain of loss

The accident started

On the brink of my father’s 57th year

I miss him so terribly

And that father wound goes deep

On both sides of my ancestral spiral helix legacy

And as I scrub

The stubborn stains

I remember all of your loneliness grief and fear

I hear your mother’s voice

Scrub that tills it shines

When I grow up

Im never ironing sheets

You cried

All these echoes here

Of childhood experiences you shared

In our later years

But Mum perfectionism left its mark

As you tried to erase the unseen grief

(While bearing witness

Passing it on to all of us)

It is with me now

I am its silent witness

I am the one who carries it here

Hidden so deeply under layers of fear

And as the cascade of trauma loss and shock

Makes its presence felt I feel the grief

And understand why I felt it became

So precarious to rise

Fearing I might fall or be torn again

By all shock and lingering imprints

Of a horrendous war

Whose impact lingered on

Sounding out its hidden echoes

Across generations

Asking me to carry it

Until it finally began to loosen

Its crippling hold