Matron

Grandma,

Do you remember my beginnings?

Made alive

by your misinformed twenty-one-year-old.

Your dread for my arrival steadily overflowed.

“You let him do this to you?”

When she told you, twenty-one years ago,

Delayed, induced, twenty-four-hour irresolute,

I had put up a fight but eviction was due.

They would amputate me from my mother’s womb

and come to find a noose around my neck.

As though I already knew

the world wasn’t ready for me yet.

you were not ready

to be Grandma.

Though Mama loved her new role

you intentionally left us most vulnerable.

Punishment for your child,

your child’s child, for taking away your child’s childhood.

Ignorance sticks to your throat,

you would rather she drown than keep her afloat.

Permanence transfigured you as my saviour.

A refuge from all the wrongs you helped create.

For these are not my memories, but pieces

of my broken dreams.

Irreversible damage that revealed more

than what I wished to have seen.

Still I confront you,

silently hoping to feel your remorse.

Was it worth destroying my family

to be a part of yours?