Category: Family

Stories

Trees have a story,
buried in their roots,
refined by seasonal passages,
etched in scarred bark

Birds know these stories
Sing their praise, unapologetic –
and we can hear them too,
if we only learn to listen

I have a story
birthed from parental lips
delineated by the jostling
of our many limbed life

It states that I am the good one,
the responsible, the brilliant,
the child of hope and valour…
this story is not mine

I am a tree, whose scars
suggest a history, whose roots
remain hidden, and whose voice
was lost in familial tempests

The birds know it, though
and carry my essence
on winged notes, back
to source, where I am written.

(Art my own)

If I Could Only Breathe

So much I want to say,
yet the oppression of opposition
stomps heavily on my airways
cutting off the flow

Daughter of a trans father
mother contemplating MAiD –
embroiled in controversy,
I see only injustice

Cannot fathom the hatred
the railing against books
and glamour, and science,
misappropriation of christianity

How am I supposed to grieve;
take up arms for those I love,
when I am silenced before I speak
judgments cast without a thought?

If I could have a word,
if anyone would listen
I would share, perhaps insight
into the lives of secrets held

Describe how hearts wilt
beneath cruelty of suppression
how torn apart we become
ignorance voiding authenticity

I would tell you of the horrors
that dwelt within our homes
the fear of discovery, of rejection
how ugly it all felt….until

Education offered explanation
and in that opening
we saw potential to climb out
from our shadowy existence

embrace a life in which our love
is neither tainted nor deviant
and tell me please, as I try to listen
how such hopefulness is sin, after all.


(Image my own)


Snapdragons

Snapdragons transport me
back to Father’s gardens –
the pleasure of pinching
delicate floral lips

Forbidden, was I
tiny feet banished from
tiers of ordered colours –
how he worshipped those rows

Hours spent on knees,
as if in prayer… attention
lavished on nurturing growth
while I shrivelled on sidelines

Longed to dig beside him,
sully my hands and share
his passion, ignorant of
an inner drive to weed

Felt only walls of separation
the coldness of perfection,
so in my wilful way,
I rebelled against taboos

On tiptoe, stepped between
the bobbing arrangements
marred the well-tended soil
and pinched the snapdragons.

(Snapdragons first appeared here in March, 2018. Edited for this edition. Art my own)

Family Rifts

Division, the determining factor
in their relationship –
who can understand
the dynamics of blood ties?

Cracked images suggest
a camaraderie, at least
once upon a time, and who
recalls the cause of the rift?

Fixated on the anger
distance a monument
to the breach, till one dies
and the absence is cemented

(Image my own)

The Last Train (Sonnet)

We wait at the station, Mother and I,
one final stop for her – painless she prays;
I busied at bedside – prolonged goodbye –
memories and regrets filling our days.

“We live too long,” she wearily proclaims
“Why must suffering linger till the end?”
I plea and bargain, call angelic names,
yet the will to survive refuses to bend.

The urgency builds as my time dwindles;
must I leave her in this compromised state?
She rallies and stands on wobbly spindles
dismisses fears – has accepted her fate.

Some destinations are clearly defined –
Death is a train whose schedule’s unkind.

(The Last Train first appeared January 2019. Image my own)