Just a poem

For Elizabeth

Illegitimate

On a silent, irridescent, cobweb morning

I laid my indigo baby in a

cradle of crystal, her wrap was pure love,

intractable and true, like her beauty.

Be under no illusion, she was born

from an illicit assignation, but to

a world  where forgiveness was forbidden.

I was labelled loose, wild, irrational

but my life had always been impervious to hope,

and happiness incomprehensible.

Unable to speak, or break our silence,

I held her hand as I breathed my goodbyes

and wished for her a life more illustrious.

When she had been taken I could breathe no more;

for I was suffocating slowly under

lumps of hardstone, which became lodged in my heart

with an inextricable, forever kind of pain.

in a locked-in, forever kind of silence.

Cait O’Connor