My little ones
racing through childhood
at a speed that feels breakneck.
I love your singing games,
piercing recorder at breakfast,
letters to Santa in July.
Your violins, tickle fests,
colourful plastic and tiny drawings.
Room service dessert,
toys instead of shoes.
Your hugs, your love.
Gappy teeth, smooth hair.
That you always pull scissors first —
never rock or paper.
Learning, learning, learning.
That we can find play—
with deep belly laughing
for the three of us,
across our ages.

Losing my pallor
my joie de vivre
around us.
Feels like a slow leaching
and a looking at the bones
and we’re trying to add
flesh to them

If we look at our strengths,
and work on them,
and amplify them,
then we’ll find
we’re an amazing team.

I’m a survivor
I just didn’t originally realise
that I was in a war.
So I didn’t recognise my bullet wounds.
Until now.

When I feel echoes
of the theatre of war
it triggers
all the trauma
and those hidden wounds
bleed again.

So I work on survival
A proper job at healing
and strengthening.

For when I forget
and get drawn into pity,
responsibility,
unnecessary accountability.
Again.
He’s narcissistic,
he will take and take
and never be healed.
Don’t forget.

At heart,
it suits him this way.
If he’s not better, then
all attention is on him.
I did enough
I did so much.
Don’t forget.

These trauma responses
that are still arising,
this hyper vigilant stress
at home
when the kids get excited
(don’t get too noisy!)
are the scars.
It was abusive.
No guilt, no more.

Don’t forget.

Tell me your dreams,
float them up high.
I’ll help to propel you
up into that sky.