Tag: family

Raven and Snake

That day, crossing the parking lot,
raven swooped past, snake in clasp –
I took it as a sign, hurried my steps.

The ward nurse stopped me,
revealed the end was near,
appointed me bearer of news.

Me, whom you loved to hate –
lashed with brash comments,
unforgiving of my youth.

Unsurprising, your wrath,
and then the threats –
to be cut from your will

Deeply ingrained the need
to hate, to blame – lawyer
didn’t comply, I remained

Represented you in death,
sorry for a life of lies ,
how often you had to pretend

to love men,
to not be lonely,
that alcohol solved all

Miss you even now –
your caustic presence
irreplaceable, left a hole.

Don’t regret finding you,
getting help, staying
bedside as death knocked.

You’d do the same –
intrinsically linked,
the raven and the snake.

(Linked to Reena’s Exploration Challenge where the prompt is to write about sudden, magical events.)

The Toll

Am not the woman my children once called Mother –
can see the disappointment in their anger-blotched
expressions, feel the constraint in their voices –

distance between us tugs on my heart, plays with
my conscience, as if illness is choice – a contrived
plot to rob them of their expectations –

hope they can forgive me before it’s too late;
hope they can forgive themselves.

A 60’s Childhood

Formative years were more destruct
than construct; contradictions riddled

the foundation of our familial structure:
one man tyrannized five females while

in the news, women marched for equality;
called the likes of him a male chauvinist.

Aunt drove a forklift truck, looked like a man,
chalked one up for women’s liberation, didn’t

talk about her sexuality; shadow of illegality
hovering around her – no one dared to ask.

At nine, I questioned the fairness of being
born a girl in a man’s world, felt impassioned

by feminist cries, yet feared my mom would
leave the nest, abandon baking, domestics;

leave us to fend for ourselves – the warm waft
of fresh-baked goods greeting us each day, gone.

Watched my sisters flaunt their womanly ways
for virile young men who flocked to see bikini

clad bodies, ripe and tanned by the sun – who
was reducing whom to sex objects? And when

my mother’s family came to visit, why were the
men’s hands so invasive, their tongues equally

misplaced, and was this what women in the streets
were crying out against? I wanted to be free, explore

my future prospects – open road ahead – but Mother
said boys will be boys, and men don’t like smart

women, and better to drop out of school at sixteen,
get a secretarial job, and be ready when your prince

arrives – so I rebelled, cut my hair, flaunted my
intelligence, spoke up about inconsistencies,

such as why is a God a He, and why Aunt didn’t
ever date – did feminist mean celibate? and why

when women were so oppressed and men had
all the power, did my father wish he could be one?

Formative years more destruct than construct;
a deviate imprint tainting normalcy’s prospects.

(A 60’s Childhood first appeared here in September, 2016.  My challenge this week is story.  Click on the link to join in.  Computer is currently in the shop – so I have set this post up in advance.  Sorry if it takes me a bit to get back to you. Image from personal collection.)

Crusader’s Return

This exile –
self-imposed, I confess –
wears thin with age.

Too many winters
braving the cold –
heart’s frozen rebellion
against Father’s tireless raving,
Mother’s queenly submission.

So many moons
engaged in a crusade –
armed with but a hollow sword –
the chill of time lapsed,
irretrievable.

Castle lights are waning,
death lingers in the air,
and only now, on this fateful
periphery, do I wonder –
measure the rage against costs –
blame’s righteousness builds
only walls – faults corpses
rotting either side.

Empty-handed, I approach,
cowed by the enormity of task –
bearing no gifts, no legacy –
only a paltry offering
of forgiveness – pray
I am not too late.

(Image provided by Willow Poetry as her weekly challenge:  What Do You See?  Also linking up with Frank  at the dVerse pub, whose theme tonight is blame and forgiveness.  Ragtag Community’s prompt is fault.)

Missing

Have you seen her –
the child we lost,
the one who lost herself?

born to a sister
breasts not yet ripe
for motherhood’s call

a passenger
on a perilous ride,
sweetness eclipsed

by a cacophony
of raised voices
the wails of women

helplessly trapped
a smothering drama;
how easily she escaped

slipped from our clutches
found comfort in the streets
preferred coldness of strangers

to the raging fires at home;
lost her to the lure of parties,
an elixir for the empty places,

found her once amongst
the debris of discarded needles
and the haze of sexual reek

the golden halo of youth
now matted clumps of shame
her beauty sunken in shadows

we’d taught her well, it seems –
the art of submission, how to
betray the self, embrace defeat

tried to pick her up, create
a milieu of normalcy, establish
homelike roots, but shams

do not last and she ran again
the echo of her absence a hole
ringing in our hearts, we are

guilt-ridden, apologetic, fear
the power of our inadequacy;
try to forget, justify, cringe

for the child we lost,
the one that got away,
the one that lost herself.

(Submitting this for Ragtag Community’s daily prompt: needle.  Computer is going into the shop so I may be MIA for bit.  Missing was first penned in October of 2017.

Family Portrait

Did you know that life would come to this?
Flattened memories pressed between wax,
the essence of our efforts forgotten, the dreams,
so carefully construed, lost.  You leaned toward
the conventional, and I was ever the sentimentalist
and yet we ended up in the same place – shadow
selves standing at the banks of our disheveled lives,
survivors, nonetheless, tokens of a past riddled
with so many lies, so much heartbreak, we are
ghost sisters, haunted, hunting, unable to step
away – drawn in, pulling apart – all that remains.