Family Secrets
Rarely did the family speak
of secrets and knowledge weak and indiscreet
but as we all know, shared laughter and tears wept
draw out our secrets uncontained, never kept.
For years, my aunts were mysterious
talking of our origins quite serious,
deciphering was impossible unless you knew
a few words to interpret better as you grew.
Little ears often strained
to know what grownups held hidden in their domain;
listening for the words more easily understood
and in that revelation of not what happened but could.
Aunt and uncles, cousins too, disliked aunt Jean most intense
and distanced themselves from the family name in their defense
of the stories never to be told except in quiet retrospect;
Aunt Jean, you see, was wild, restless, behaving most incorrect.
She danced in bar room halls
discarding her clothes for all
as drunken men leered upon her naked form
she was that way from the very day she was born.
She was a free spirit, bipolar, un-diagnosed back then
freely taken in and loved by many men
the black sheep shunned by our family
looked down upon because of her own sense of sanity.
Why? The children never really knew
except to follow the elders set cue,
but as I look back over time
sanity may be found wanting in the selfless climb.
Copyright © DM Babbit | Year Posted 2018
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