Longsight M13*

I heard you wanted me so bad

when I was unconscious of that

plunged in your womb’s waters

waiting to break

It was not the easiest time

communism, curtain, calamities around

Whilst the whole wide world

was fighting with the opposite foe

you were building your life for yourself

in your “everyone’s eligible” enemies’ circumstances

to have a job, food, and love

Why couldn’t I be with you then?

I was just captured in a foetus shape

*

Then I came into this world

after seven years of waiting for me, but I don’t remember much of that

Some shame, situations, surety

of being always with you till I grow up

Yet when I was a teenager

something unusual happened

You wanted to have someone else

as the apple of your eye

another baby, no doubt

So, I was granted a baby sister

which I cared about above all else

not knowing that soon

I will be deprived that sweetest candy too

*

They were constantly together

playing, partying, pinching their cheeks

My mum became a little girl again

to satisfy my sista’s needs

Every birthday, every balloon, every buddy’s bubble

small girl always had the highest level of entertainment

Whatever she saw had to possess

every doll, every house, and the things around

My mum was spending all nights

on sewing costumes for the ball

Every hole had to be sewn up

every button sewn on

on the new-born mascot

*

My world became black

made from cobwebs, diseases, spasms

Kicked out of every school

without a fundamental support

I was only sixteen

but my life seemed to be coming to an end

I heard that’s what every young person thinks

yet for me it was strange

Taught to be alone

from the first minutes of my existence

now I had to tolerate

that is someone more crucial than me in my mum’s life

Not easy to accept harsh state of facts

*

I followed my own path

still humbly hoping for a hint

how my dreamy reality

change into more profitable thing

I discovered the culture in many aspects

not wanting to drown in the marshy meanders

of the only one, imposed, immortal

immediate TV medium

or disco polo music

bouncing from the scene of the local “cultural” centre

everyone was so excited about

And since then, I was severely chastised for

expanding my horizons and fighting for my truth

*

I was told that I have schizoaffective disorder

meant to disorganise everything what I’ll touch

in my adult life

from thoughts, relations, to the whole communities

hating me for what I haven’t done

At least that’s what I was thinking

My dad told the neighbour

that I came back from there

Mental hospital for a month

seemed like hell

One boy was strolling in the night

swearing to kill his mother

His thoughts were disturbed

*

One girl was smoking a cigar

and every time

she returned from the outside

she was hiding inside

the nest built up from feathers

of the duvet strung over her body

Once we went out together

she was acting like a man

After I had a déjà vu each time I’ve passed this place by car

How could I have known that

this was a proper PTSD response to

this real-life experience of my parents’ decision of placing me

in that institution

*

My body there was swirling and writhing and I was not allowed

to use knife to brush the bread with butter

They visited me a couple of times with my little sister

When I came back everything was muted for months

I was urged to go to work or to school

I’d chosen to study culture privately

to know more about things I had a passion for

Not many students conversed with me

laughing, lynching, limiting my views

My time on earth was already endangered because of

intrusive thoughts

mortifying, torturing, haunting me down

to the deepest distant dungeons

*

Nobody from my family

is normally speaking to me

It’s nothing wrong, I can get by

My cousins hung from the curtains in the window of my room

like monkeys each time when

my mum was throwing parties on the name-days

in my parents’ house

full of hustle and bustle then

She communicates with all of them

uncles, aunties, cousins, and grandparents

imprisoned in one house like in a courtroom

They know about every operation, every tumble, every kick

I told my mum secretly

*

“The family must stick together”

That’s what my mum says to prove things

I left my family to start a new life

to achieve my goals

in the country I knew about

that is friendly, familiar, financially stable

Now the tea is soothing my tears

of the so-called nostalgia

for the situations and people hidden in the past

of the tall buildings arising around

acquaintances of dilapidated tenement houses

shouting for a renovation

and never-to-be-forgotten

*

I travelled during the heat

with no good words said to me

after

only threatening that I behaved inappropriately

asking my mum for the things I used to eat

and not the ones given to me

Whilst I spent thirty years

among the same walls

with people I knew very little

I travelled during the pandemic

the road seemed like hell

tests on every corner

with the money spent shamefully, sumptuously

*

When I reappeared

from the other side of canal

I was silenced, gossiped, cursed

by my sister to my mum and dad

that I am the worst person

but she didn’t dare to say any word to me

avoiding my presence, so to speak

When I found out it was already two years

of whispering to my getters

and building up the world

for their money of course

while I was ripping my guts out

on the foreign soil for a piece of bread

*

I stayed in this place forever

mentally bruised and literally latent

in my own universe

knowing that my family

will never read these words

only the ones more related to them instead

about the things they care about

and not the daughter from the other planet

even conceived from the same blood

yet converted into another colour

from the mud dispersed around

that fleeting fields

with yellow rapeseeds

*

I am a writer never read

My mum never cared

to read anything at all

My dad read

only my sista’s dissertation

among other newspapers, magazines, and news

from the swamp province

Even though my dissertation and books

were written earlier

but instantly inverted inside out

to sink in, to hurt, to bleed

but what is the purpose of this

motherly muting mask

*

She’s a switch sider

reconciliating fighting camps

My mum is the boss

in her small-town realm

built from respect, kindness, and taxes

known to her from every corner

of the human mind

you wish to recognise

from the joys and sorrows of a humankind

Did someone ever try to ask?

Why nobody cares

how are the things

from my point of view?

*

I wrote this being unable to communicate

with you in the regular shape

of our common ground

as our language became a tug of war

between two countries, characters, collaboratives of any kind

I still can’t fully visualise what had happened there

You always said I live in my head

You can give me money, but couldn’t give me love I deserved

although you always tried to make up

for the lost years

spent in a horrendous loneliness

Yet not talking about anything whilst I have nightmares all the time

will it ever make all this up to me?

*

*The title of my poem is taken from a song by Ian Brown, but it relates more to the meaning of the words than to the place itself.

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Thank you for reading!