Dry Match
What came early
set its shape in me.
The mass it left
instructed the body
in a different gravity.
I could not sleep
until the door
closed behind him.
Silence without his return
rearranged the body –
as if the body knew
what the mind refused to name.
When he travelled,
I summoned storms
for him.
They never came.
Something worse
did.
My mother was there,
in theory.
But presence
is not the same
as shelter.
Sometimes I came home
and the house was undecided –
a half-set table,
a single shoe,
no reasons
to be found.
She’d been admitted again.
Real or not –
the explanations dissolved
as soon as I looked
at them.
My brother
collected small disasters –
a door, a staircase, a fish bone –
the catalogue of a childhood
left unarchived.
He was curious,
and the world
made note.
I moved differently.
Perhaps
I had already learned pain
where it made least noise.
At school,
I was sharp enough
to be left alone.
Praise travelled far –
but never home.
My clothes
kept the argument
my parents
never finished.
I could hear it
fraying in the hem.
The other children
smelled of warmth.
I smelled
of aftermath.
He began to confide in me
once I was old enough
not to ask him
to stop.
His thoughts arrived sideways –
a letter from somewhere,
a call not returned,
a sentence left
open-ended –
placed on my desk,
waiting to be sorted.
Thirteen,
already shouldering
what my father would not name. As if I knew
where it might be
set down.
He needed an ear
that would not tremble.
I gave him that.
And the rest
was mine to manage.
He lost the urge
to resist.
And the quiet
sank deeper
than sound.
He receded –
a man unmoored,
his outline thinning
in rooms
he once commanded.
There was always
a sense of trouble –
well-dressed,
unnamed,
standing
just outside the frame.
I knew.
I didn’t know.
Both were true.
He went
without a note.
Leaving rooms
I had to close –
each carrying its own
unread envelope
of air.
I found him first.
Then the rest of my life
starting over
from the worst
possible place.
I went in person.
It was necessary
and
unspeakable.
I still know the smell
of the gloves
they used
to open him.
I had a mother,
a brother,
a baby,
and no space
to fall apart.
I raised the boy
on work
and will.
Survived
on what
could be absorbed
and endured.
A dissertation
took shape
between spells.
A thesis
in a long thaw.
The doctors said
disorder.
I said:
it’s categorised.
What I had
was a method –
a way to remain
upright
with a child
balanced
on top.
Some decisions
passed for faith.
Others
cost
what I couldn’t spare.
But I kept the boy safe.
Made repairs
when I could.
Never once told him
how bad it got.
That, too,
is a kind
of mother tongue.
Now they see
the stillness,
the house I taught
to behave,
the boy who grew
without carrying
the debris.
Now
there is steadiness
where that weight
used to sit.
The boy walks freely.
I do not follow.
But I watch
as the door
stays open.
No need
to explain.
But if I did –
it would be
for her.
If I broke
that silence,
it would be
like handing her
a dry match,
the girl who counted
safety
by footsteps
in the hall
and kept her breath
as testimony.
There was no lesson
in the blood.
No gift.
No seed
promised
to bloom.
Still –
she left,
spine straight,
like a name
that finally
fit.
Her brother, too –
his quiet
no longer tied
to that place.
The children
run
and their ground
has never
known
a wound.
Some days
I almost
believe it.