Each Will Have Their Hopes… for 2018
I was three…my mother died
They raised me in the Bagnio…
Rouge Red…low city basement rooms.
My father was unknown to me.
And I was ugly…moon face…
My mouth too loose and lips.
My arms and legs too short and thin,
A puny microbe child…transparent skin…..
My soul sat silently within…
At fourteen I was set to work.
My tiny froglet body offered up
as sacrificial youth.
I had to earn my keep….and…
I got used to it.
I left the Bagnio at seventeen.
I left the women who had nurtured me…
They’d given me the only life they knew.
In that…they’d cared for me.
My voice…..
that trapped inanimate within..
rose up …
A Morning Wren flapped out from me
and I began to sing…
I am no beauty still.
But I flew free…on wings !
I named myself Snow Pea.
I work at sowing children’s clothes.
I sing …you won’t have heard of me.
Kristine Byrne. Jan. 2018