JOY

photo by Patricia

The hardness in my heart left no room for joy, or peace, or any kind of lasting contentment. The rage burning was not my doing, nor was the inability to know how to give it the salve needed to put out the blaze. The fire needed to speak. The family squelched that right. The family so desperately needed even if it was the source of the open, frizzling, scalding wound.

It wasn’t until over the age of fifty that facts came out of me where they had festered for decades, first as a little girl when no one came, then all the years hence where the traumas swirled. And she was like an ice box with an explosion inside.

Who will let her talk? Who will help her feel safe? And even in safety the bars of childhood silence lock her down. The filth and muddy tar…