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BYE MA HI MA – 17/10/2022
Sweet taste of our curls under finger, strands of whispery blond blowing past sense
She used to lick our eye inside the socket if something got in it
She used to walk us up large hills playing music with grass between our hands
Marvel at the inside of a buttercup
Creak open church doors smell the wet concrete see the sky expanding over beautiful sandy beach
Wonderful all of us together
Dads shorts and Olympic trainers green and white striped bow legged
Full of racous laughter
We were a unit and I used to glance at those outside without explanation
We just were
I was safe – I am safe, although we have dispersed like an old melted elastic band
Twisting and curling looking at each other, sometimes in the eye
Sometime just part of an old old story
She used to sing to me Irish Proverbs and leave books on princesses by my bed after reading grand tales with sales, pirates and me sailing high on the ships sails
I kept them precious when I slipped under the door of the ganglands
My new found breasts and length of hair, long legs seemed to carry me there without my conscious in tow
She left me then she did not comprehend
The scorn from her own childhood lying heavy on her chest which was held and overlooked and kept safe by her husband
With the tobacco pouch and whisky bottle
Which she swallowed
I hear her asthma and hold her hand like autumn leaf now we are best of friends
Yet I am inflamed inside from the drugs alchohol and sex
Detox many times only to arrive at a nasaly snort
I resort to ask myself am I grieveing you this gap?
I grieve you ma like gritty hard knobbly wall that my skin is scraped across
Blood stains on sheets as I feel the womb clear and happy and joyful
As my little ones here and I would never been able to leave like you did
I know the child in you knew only to run
Run from the drugs in your childs system, run from the man lying her down who clowned with drugs, run from her drop in grammar and ladylike mannerism
Run as if I had run down your genes and slipped them into a pocket of someone dragged up
Born in a barn
Run
Was it in shame? Or forgetting only remembering when the pirate princess returned waving her flag for the underdog holding in comfort the suicidal
Allowing a care coordinator to probe into those ganglands
And she says
Oh sweetheart such death such grief
Sweet irony of words
I found it. Held bodies in my arms
Seeing your eyes in the distance. Revoking me.
