Still Processing
Maybe I’ll never understand.
She could always tear my heart apart.
Mostly with unsubstantiated anger –
Followed by deliberately executed silence:
Coventry became my secondary home.
At eighty-something a heated argument mushroomed
In accepting blame without accepting anything
She excused herself with these immortal words,
“Ha! I’m way too old to change, now!”
Even then they were spat with venom,
Eyes expressed wide in open challenge.
There was no real point in retaliating:
I’d long before learned a son can never win.
© griffonner 2023
Views: 632
Love this vignette, Allen, so true and to the point. Only quibble is the use of “secondary” – I suggest using “second.”
I don’t know how that happened! I was replying to you, not me. 🙁
Hi Bhi. Thank you for your comment. I think where I went wrong was adding two words at the end of that line, which would have left the use of secondary more correct……. So I’ll take them out and see how it stands revised. *Gratefully* Allen
Hmmmm. This makes me so glad my mum was, Mum.
I can understand that, absolutely. For many years my MIL became my mother in a way: Of course there is no blood in those pseudo-relationships, but there is love.
Allen
A very strong poem – I know how it is, even wrote Unaccompanied – yes this war is lost.
Thank you, Nic. In all honesty, I have given up the struggle with her mindset (to use your words) – but the memories, they don’t go away, do they?
Allen x
To the point Allen, as those of us who have been there ourselves will recognise. Not forgetting Larkin’s famous lines – we can easily revisit that other country, where we will always be in the wrong – after all, she has our very birth as a weapon!
Best….Dougie