If I could fold time like origami,
crease the years between my fingers,
I would whisper through the paper-thin membrane
that separates your small hands from mine—
Get help. Get help before the storms arrive.
But here I sit, forty years downstream,
watching the same grey clouds gather
in my kitchen on Tuesday mornings,
tasting the familiar metal of unspoken fear
when laughter comes too loud, too bright,
when silence stretches too long, too dark.
I know now what you couldn’t name then—
the way her eyes would glass over like winter ponds,
how her voice could shatter like dropped china
or disappear entirely for weeks.
I know the medical terms, the treatments,
the early signs we missed like scattered breadcrumbs
leading nowhere but deeper into the woods.
Child-me, sweet unknowing archaeologist,
you’re still digging through the wreckage,
still trying to piece together
why some days Mummy was made of sunshine
and others, carved from thunder.
I want to tell you it wasn’t your fault—
that her moods weren’t weather systems
you could predict or prevent,
that love alone cannot stabilise
the chemical tides that pulled her
between euphoria and the void.
But time is a one-way street,
and I am left here on the pavement
of middle age, holding the map
we needed then, watching you
walk blindly into the beautiful,
terrible storm that shaped us both.
The bitter threads run through everything now—
my hesitation before joy,
the way I scan faces for fault lines,
how I still flinch at raised voices,
still hold my breath during silences.
Yet here’s the sweetness in the sorrow:
you survived. We survived.
And though I cannot reach back
to spare you the sharp edges,
I can honour the fierce child
who learned to love despite the chaos,
who built a life from broken pieces
and called it whole.
Énouement—this ache of knowing
what I cannot unknow,
this tenderness for the child
I cannot save, only remember
with the complicated love
of someone who has finally learned
to forgive us both.
Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved. | 🌐 Translate
From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
énouement
n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, finally learning the answers to how things turned out but being unable to tell your past self.
Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash
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