Borrowed Memories (Poetry)

Like a faded borrowed book I never returned
I now and then flick through what little I remember —
the scraps of her life she so-casually mentioned
in passing — like they weren’t really that important to anyone.

Well. It’s not as if she’s ever going to use them now
being too old — too near to being dead.
She won’t even miss them — her mind’s
such a poor filing system. Unreliable. With all those nerveless gaps.

It was undeniably a hard childhood — bleak with strangers.
She hardly ever spoke about her mother.
I imagined the sickroom of the eternal invalid —
the so-called wasting away that ate at all the family. Relentless pain.

No brothers or sisters. No one to share the experience.
Which must have been tough. Father at work earning a wage
while out of necessity she was farmed out to foster families.
All those tender years of not belonging. Collecting the scars.
Waiting...
                                        to grow up.

What of friends — schoolmates — playground chums ?
No repeated name hung like a charm to ward off loneliness.
Was she difficult? Unruly or unlikeable? The kid that got left out
and never was invited round to tea?

And so few photographs to pin her scanty history
to anything solid — a place — a certain time...
like nothing and no one claimed her for their own —
life simply passed (it seemed) while she just stood in line.

What was there for any diary to record?
Christmases and birthdays held no hint
of anecdote — excitement — or maybe she was bored
while the absence of affection worried through ... I guess she ached
                                        from it.

So I stretch her memories out on too-large a page —
those few she ever shared with me.
Rubbed away by time — a short string of worry beads
I’m bound to keep for her — the mother/daughter bloody tie aside
words find at last a begrudging knot of sympathy.