The earliest memory is running
through a field, touching just,
new buds of the dry, burnt grass
with my outstretched palm
but I saw a film, and someone else
has had this dream, got there first
so I’m left with the next, you
over me, fists clenched, while in my mind
I was running away so fast, yet
in reality, I saw that film too...
You say that I’m a fool, deranged
brain diseased beyond repair
you give me white walls for white thoughts
but all I see, leaching through
are the colours of despair
you say acceptance is the key
stop denying the truth, yet
my world is working perfectly
it’s yours that doesn’t fit
Last night, the visitor returned
I’m not supposed to know, so I didn’t
just watched her lying lips, reveal
the missing tooth, which
I remember knocking out
I don’t feel that anger now, just
cocktails of numb, mixtures of vague
like chemicals, coursing through
always this time, or roughly the same
I was alive, I was a child,
a girl and then a mother, briefly
now who? white gowned, defined
head to toe, dressed to press
against windows that conform, yet
you refuse to bend, but iron
has its own will too, ox eyed,
looking, with dulled senses
A life sliced on shards of glass
without a suture to fix, the truth
that died so long before a mind,
needing to be free of this body,
chained, without future,
the next page, simply promised more
a simple note, like blood, pathetic
hanging lifeless, limply by the door
May 3, 2020
May 3, 2020 at 12:33 PM UTC
The earliest memory is running
through a field, touching just,
new buds of the dry, burnt grass
with my outstretched palm
but I saw a film, and someone else
has had this dream, got there first
so I’m left with the next, you
over me, fists clenched, while in my mind
I was running away so fast, yet
in reality, I saw that film too...
You say that I’m a fool, deranged
brain diseased beyond repair
you give me white walls for white thoughts
but all I see, leaching through
are the colours of despair
you say acceptance is the key
stop denying the truth, yet
my world is working perfectly
it’s yours that doesn’t fit
Last night, the visitor returned
I’m not supposed to know, so I didn’t
just watched her lying lips, reveal
the missing tooth, which
I remember knocking out
I don’t feel that anger now, just
cocktails of numb, mixtures of vague
like chemicals, coursing through
always this time, or roughly the same
I was alive, I was a child,
a girl and then a mother, briefly
now who? white gowned, defined
head to toe, dressed to press
against windows that conform, yet
you refuse to bend, but iron
has its own will too, ox eyed,
looking, with dulled senses
A life sliced on shards of glass
without a suture to fix, the truth
that died so long before a mind,
needing to be free of this body,
chained, without future,
the next page, simply promised more
a simple note, like blood, pathetic
hanging lifeless, limply by the door
The 1913 Mental Deficiency Act in the UK, enabled unmarried mothers to be categorised as “moral imbeciles” and sent to lunatic asylums, even if the pregnancy was as a result of ****** or **** The law was only repealed in 1959, but it wasn’t until 1987 that the concept of “illegitimacy” was abolished in law. Even in 1968, in the age of the Beatles and the contraceptive pill, there were 12,993 illegitimate babies given up for adoption by women unable to face the stigma of unmarried motherhood.