Poetry is a tad new for me and this is my first attempt. It’s a message for my daughters. I’ve tried to show them I understand how hard it must have been to see me in my addiction to alcohol. It is about how I viewed my own mortality for a very long time as absolutely nothing. Yet to my girls it was their everything.
Ride a Dragon
I taught my girls to ride a dragon when my instinct was to protect.
I portrayed the devil as my friend.
Dance with us I said.
The life I wanted to give them adorned our family walls.
Fairy’s and sunshine’s.
My nickname for them all
My mortality to them should have been an anchor
Yet I became a wave. They rode it naked and bare each and every day
Never should it be that way. Calm waters are always still.
They never should have seen me fall
My life lived as a whim.
I read childhood stories from intoxicated lips
Promises of adventures and a life I knew was never meant to live
My smile the holder of my secrets, lies on every breath.
Their hearts willing and open, accepting the stories that I weave.
I took, snatched their innocence in a way that was never meant to be.
I never saw it as my fault. It’s never just someone else’s turn.
Now I crave peace and order. My shoes lined up in a row.
I want that St Christopher clasping around my neck
given to me by an atheist father. Knowing it’s not his now to fix
I see my future now reflected in their beautiful smiles,
forgiveness is a gift I never saw as mine. To be forgiven is a great adventure. Maybe I’m ready now for that life,
my gift to them
my mortality.
I no longer see as something to pass the time.
Poetry by Rachel Moss; Artwork courtesy of Liam McDonald.
