Listening to my mother lie
(about the hardships, the pain,
the struggle) all is fine.
The trauma she collected in a bag
from childhood. Prickly, sharp,
strong in odour, a thickness from a culture
deep in the seas of mistaken paradise.
Her inability to hold back all copycat
strategies of violent control, repeating
what she knew was wrong;
crying in private when we “slept.”
She tried. She tried so hard.
To escape the trauma, never seeking help.
But time did teach her, heal her.
A new land soothes her soul, a culture
she couldn’t quite swallow whole.
The old would always be there,
Forcing a placid narrative to replace
the waste of destruction she endured.
“How was your life?” They’d ask.
and I’d listen to my mother lie.
A Brit living in Canada. An English Lit graduate with a passion for poetry, the occult and dogs. An avid reader of fiction, comics and critical theory, SBD has managed to start her writing career slowly, teaching herself as she goes.
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Siphiwe 🙌🙌🙌 you snapped, I wanted to give you 5 stars for this but I dont know how to do the rating.