Happy Easter

My friend phones in crisis.

‘You’ve got to leave it be,” I say.

You can't sustain these shocks.

She’s an adult now.”

"Yes," she says, 

"And it cuts both ways.

If the homeless team find her,

they can't even tell me she's safe

unless she gives permission,

because she's 34."

That surprises me.

I thought the soft-faced girl 

was about 19 —

that childish gaze,

and her behaviour ...

The story this time:

the refuge kicked her out

because she got in a fight,

and the mental health clinic's full.

She's got no money, and 

she's out of her medication.

She’s borrowed a phone

to call her mum

from some woman in the park.

"I don't even know

if she's telling me the truth,

or how confused she might be,"

her mother says.

"But I've worked out the pattern.

It's intermittent. Happens

at Christmas and Easter.”

“When did it start?” I ask.

“She was 13, it was after

her father's suicide."

Her other daughter’s visiting

to use her mum’s computer,

and she has things to say:

"You never helped me either.

You've got to go and look for her.

You're not a proper mother."

I know the years of care,

the returns in violent abuse.

"That's all you need," I say.

"Tell her that's the past.

Tell her to back off."

"Oh, she's worried about her sister. 

But I can't go. The lawn-mowing man

threw up a stone, and smashed 

the back window of my car.

I can't go anywhere."

Meanwhile her son with Asperger's

shuts the door of his room,

“To keep the dramas out.”

"I'm shaking and I want to vomit,"
says my friend.

April Poem A Day Challenge, day 20: A family poem