Poetry - 'The Last One to Know'

The Last One to Know
by Barbara Whittaker

If only you had told her when
the last time was the last

From five into her forties the child in her lay waiting
to feel again that easy scoop
that stole her from her bed and
placed her bleary eyed and trusting
amongst her father’s tools
and the sawhorse where
you draped her

If she had known that was the last
she could have slept without the dread

She need not have bunged on such a turn
when they rearranged the room and
made her sleep right near the door -
somehow in her kindergarten head
she thought the distance from it might have kept her safe -
but knew no words to verbalize her fear

of unspeakable things

If she had known,
she could have played out in the yard
instead of tangled in her shoes
in the wardrobe
with the door closed
except for just a crack

Such irony that even after you had died -
when drinking and disease laid you both cold in the ground
her fears, disconnected from their source
thrived on unchecked
incestuously feeding on the damage in your wake

A child cannot breathe such impossible betrayal
alongside the faith she craves like air
that those who are nearest
are the dearest

She cannot colour such brutality
alongside lavender hibiscus and
yellow allamanda

She cannot register the torture of your touch
with flesh that barely knows
the meaning of itself

Her wordless stories – hers and yours –
sank into a sheltered darkness
And with the sinking disconnected
fragments of herself

As time went on
all she saw were uncles
tinkering, talking parts,
boots propped on a sawhorse,
sharing jokes she didn’t understand

Then at night recurring monsters did their
dark insistent work
scooping her from dream to dream
for decades yet to come

because still she didn’t know
that the last time was the last time.