Tag: #parenting
The fragile cast
Tell me again
To be fearless
Tell me again
To depend on myself
I am yet a child
Still holding her toy by the ear
I am feeling you give me
The hard water slap of advice
Cold on my cheek, formerly warm.
You say
It’ll toughen me up
But I already know
It has wrought the reverse
I am not
A leathered creature of your creation
I am already
Quite changed and mangled.
Whilst you
Suffered and carved expressions from granite
Still you were told, you were a marvel
I was weighted down only with disapprobation
And your searing brand of tough love
Tore me further without support
Gave me greater fears, made me feel alone
In a room full of sound.
You cannot rob a child of their ego before it is formed
Nor nurture one empty handed and pickpocketed
You cannot protect a child by harm
Broken is broken.
We all require, when we start in this world
The unconditional faith of others
In a look, a knowledge, some portion of belief
In the validity of us
Lifted just enough to see over the edge.
Life already begs to steal the best
We cannot survive by being cast into fire before we learn to walk
It doesn’t forge stronger bones
We live as ash, insubstantial invalids
Longing for the strength of kindness.
Before you break a child
Think of them twenty years from now
Grown on thin gruel and scraps
We who stand in the tempest
May appear whole
But in our essence we lack
The varnish of other’s meant to grow us tall
It is in the stained radiance
We find the courage to face the world
Bestowed on us by those meant to protect
The fragile cast of a child.
IF
If depression were a shadow
when it is my shadow
waking me up with glass behind my eyes
replacing authentic feeling with
stifled, muffled, agonies
depression tells me; don’t get your hair cut
the hair dresser will stare too hard and you cannot
bear to be scrutinized as your father who called you
many things like plain-faced and ungainly but most of all
stocky leading to a starvation worthy
yes that father who because of his own mental defect
could not really stand long in the sun of parenthood
you’d have been better off loose and lopsided
with latch key children
to climb dog piss stained trees that barely held your weight
as they pushed through concrete with white pealing hands
as city green must
an effort make
we would chew on wild rhubarb, give ourselves stomach aches
eat dandelions and wild plums and share a precious few
hard-boiled sweets sticky in our pockets
some turned our mouths the color of tar
behind the corrugated iron where bombed out houses
stand like disfigured moments
collapsing in tombed neglect
we chased skinny wild cats and built fluttering camps
fortresses around destruction and sadness
something I learned to carry inside
when I sought to travel far from the city
its anonymous bricked faces
lending little grace
when I said goodbye to prefab family who
had their own lives
I was an appendage
needing to find my tribe
instead inheriting faulty DNA
tingeing my wake with sorrow
much as I tried
even on the warm days I wore leg warmers
pretended to be auditioning for FAME
when I ordered a hot chocolate and watched curling waves
change sequined shoreline in slow swell
though the world amassed around me
glorious and glittering like water touched by fire
as bleating sun dipped low against horizon
I could not find a way to feel unburdened
or climb aboard the impulse to slough skin
care nothing of what others would say
try hard as I could to become
laughter
that ephemeris
out of reach … thing
TheFeatheredSleep 