From years past

The memories of vindictiveness

And cruel manipulation

Burst

Through subconscious memory

And preyed

Upon the mind

Seering the thoughts of the abused

Like a hot iron

Lifted from the fire

Of tortured memories.

Prenatally reviled

She was persuaded from the mother’s womb

By harassing doctor’s

Who surrendered

To the hysteria of the one

Who wanted her out

And gone.

Days and weeks

In a humidicrib

Blessedly,

Succoured by a father

On five days army leave

Who spent most of those days

Beside her tiny cocoon of life.

Not the birthing mother

Who declined interest

In the unwanted offspring

Who had burdened her life

With perceived discomfit

For 22 days, she ignored

The jettisoned fruit of her womb

Before her first glance

At the one aborted.

Growing her up

Through childhood years

Treated as the family Cinderella

Made to fetch, carry, cook, clean,

Even to mind the younger siblings,

The girls were given angelic treatment,

The boys reviled by a mother,

Whose preference in life

Was to shed parental responsibility,

Preferring instead,

To drift off into a world of dreamy romance

By reading for countless hours

Lost in the text of perceived love,

Developed by the hands of far-away authors.

That deprived elder child,

So often dispatched to a grandmother,

The inference being

Out of sight and out of mind

Of the birthing woman, her reluctant mother.

But when home tasks became onerous,

She was summoned,

By phone from far away,

For a homecoming reminiscent for her,

As a return to hell on earth.

A prestigious scholarship,

Won by dint of perseverance

Dedicated effort and application,

Gave her a place as a boarder in a private school,

For her senior secondary years.

The dominating mother

Cruelly denied her opportunity,

“All my children must be equally treated

The scholarship will go to her head,

No … no scholarship for you.”

“She does not want to accept the scholarship!

She prefers to attend government high school,

She will stay with my sister,

The money will help her and Margo will cope.”

All this

With never a word of recognition

Bestowed

Upon the sack-clothed, sad, soul

Within the chest

The hernia distorted frame

Of her daughter.

The foundational years of her upbringing

Were tarnished and cracked

By a mother

Who was so cruelly dispositioned

With devilish intent

Upon distorting her focus

Predicating it with negative intent,

Abusing her psyche

And scarifying her soul.

She gave the lie

To the idea

That a child is forever embedded within a mothers heart.

Like that premature birth,

She incised from her brain,

ANY thought of love or fondness,

For that firstborn,

Who for her,

Tarnished her looks and distorted her figure

When all she wanted

Was to frisk and gambol, displaying her looks

To those who would oogle.

Yeeetch!

An imposition,

A bloody road block,

“Barrier to my way of life

And the desires of my heart,

BEGONE”!!