You couldn't
Seem to
Understand
Why I didn't
Write love poems
About you

But honestly
How could I
Take the time
To write
When I was busy
Being afraid of you?

Let us call it
exactly what it is.
 
 
Grand
Grandiose
Grandioso
 
 
gestures that leave me suspended
from a tray ceiling like
 
 
a glass chandelier hanging
on a string of beaded words.
 
 
It's all very
 
 
Grand
Grandiose
Grandioso
 
 
until the
string is pulled
too tight.
 
 
 
Then there will be
nothing left
but glass, beads,
 
 
and broken hearts
on a marble floor.

I tried hard
not to hear forced
gasps and stop-start
slaps of feet on floorboards
upstairs.

I just sat
stirring Shreddies
beneath the milk
like submarines.

        ‘The hits keep coming’,
the man on the radio said,
as if he knew.
And a neighbour took me to school again.

I don’t know why the ambulance came,
details forever submerged in waters
deep and murky.
At least he was gone for a while.

Once he’d adored her,
‘daddy’s little girl’
he had said
while he swung her around
then she perched on his shoulders.
He’d tell everybody
about his angel.

Until she hit thirteen,
the devil she became.
His grip tightened,
knuckles now white
‘Just like your mother’
‘Don’t you dare talk back’
He’d taught her how to flinch

Shown her
the cost of silence.
and whilst
Mothers forgive,
Wives excuse,
daughters remember-
because he always remembered

He raised a daddy’s girl
who won’t bow now
a girl unfettered she became
whilst he, fettered by his past
mistook fear for power
but now that’s gone
and so is he

She painted me in violent red
Dripping oil and
Strokes of toxic lead
Painted bloodied battle scenes
Of her, martyred
Me, dead
Vast imagery to tell her story,
Duplicitously
She painted her face
On every soldier, replaced,
And sold it museum to museum,
Showcased
I am the pawn,
Exhausted
A lifetime of submission
Of holding up hers,
Supported
I jumped ship and swam to shore
Faced that pain,
Drew lines in the sand,
And ended the war
She sings to the world her lies
Still, now
And paints me in violent red
From the cut she made,
From the wounds she bled.

Sharp heat sears through the layers of my skin.
White hot and blinding, leaving an echo in the room I once called my home.

Then follows the deafening silence.
Enveloping the shell of what was once a free and happy child.
What is now empty and lifeless.

Because you can hit her.
She's your punching bag.
The kind that won't swing back.
So, go on. Do it again.

And kiss it better just to shatter it again.