The sad woman

     I am older. You are older mother.
     Vain. Set in your ways. Habits.
     Years of the habits of a pretty woman behind you.
     You're an orphan. I'm grown but
     Still a child. Your child and daily
     I become more like you. I move in
     The world the same way that you did
     When you were my age. Once, I was
     In my thirties. Attractive-looking.
     Now I am forty-plus. Unconventional-
     Looking. You, mum, are still beautiful.

And the habits of a beautiful woman die hard.

     What always saved me was the chair.
     The therapist's chair. Talking sessions
     With someone who did what you
     Never could do to me, mother and that
     Was listen. Listening to me, was all
     That I ever wanted and you could never
     give that to me. There's all this history in

my family with my aunts. Babs, Magda (my second mother).

     I wasn't hospitalised for depression
     this year. For every season, there's a
     madness reality that I cannot fathom.
     So, I live with a kind of quiet courage
     from the depths of my soul, the river
     and salt and storm of the journal that
     I write my thoughts in daily and I pray
     That my mother and father will love me
     till the end of my days. That a parental
love will carry me through till the end of my life.
     Hemingway drove ambulances during the war.
     Already in primary school I speaking

     proper English. Children made mad fun
     of me. Mother was very unforgiving.
     She told me I should laugh with them.
     School was like going to war on a daily
     basis. I am writing this poem to thank the
     psychiatrists in my life. The men and women who saved me.
     Who saved my soul. I am writing this
     poem for a woman who did not love me

back even when I gave her my heart. I, me, myself
surround her now with the healing light of words.