Miss Polly Had A Dolly

 

 

 

night has a dull ache to it

fog is moving in like a dark cloth

being carefully put over a cage

so as not to disturb a song

 

out     under sullen moon

hiding her knowing behind silver clouds

that a woman’s soul

should always weep in shadows

 

i hide this sorrow

like a precious pearl

my girl     she was

too sacred to share

 

sadness     filtered through guilt

or something like shame

because I was not strong enough

to demand that she love me

 

that she owed me a debt

of not dying before me

her final revenge

for something only she knew

though it cost her more bitterly

than I       searching sky for solace

only a mother could crave

 

I sung her    Miss Polly had a dolly

who was sick sick sick

she knew it off by heart

but I had not grasped     how deeply

 

i sing it      under canopy of sullen sky

embracing air     thick as death

for she was my girl

and this      too sacred to share

 

©Carol Desjarlais 11.25.23

 

I am not the only one who has a child who had an illness.  How hurt she was to hurt others so.  I sacrificed myself to her hate so that she would keep it there rather than be projected onto others.  That did not work either.  She always had to hate someone.  I think she got tired of hiding her truths and I did not exist to her any more.  But I know better.  She knew how it felt to be adored.  She didn’t know that a mother’s love is forever even when it is discarded in dust she molded out of her demons.  This sorrow is a longing for her to have stayed that beautiful brown-eyed girl that loved her mother deeply.  I am now a mother with no place to put that love that was meant just for that one. I would take even her hate to have her back where I could try again with the knowledge I have now.  I am not the only one.  I know many who are struggling with not knowing how to fix a beloved child who cannot love us back.