Jade McGlynn | + Follow Poet |
Spoken Word | + Fav Poem | Comment | Email | Print |

For you, mother

My father was the storm.
He tore through walls,
through skin,
through silence.
And you,
you were caught in the middle,
Just the same as me.

I used to wonder why you stayed.
Why the door never swung wide,
why escape was only a dream I whispered to myself at night.
But now I see
you weren’t free either.
You were surviving.
And survival doesn’t always look like leaving.
Sometimes it looks like endurance.
Sometimes it looks like breathing through broken glass because there’s no other air to breathe.

I was hurt, Mother.
You were hurt, too.
And even if you couldn’t protect me,
I know you loved me with the scraps you had left.
I know you held me when you could,
and that mattered.
It kept a flame alive in me,
small, but burning.

This isn’t blame.
This isn’t anger.
This is me standing here,
taking all the weight of his shadow, and putting it down.
This is me saying:
I forgive you.

Not because it erases the past.
Not because pain disappears with words.
But because forgiveness is my rebellion.
Because healing is my inheritance.
Because love,
the kind that’s not chained,
not twisted,
is what I choose to carry forward.

Mother,
I forgive you.
I forgive us.
And in that forgiveness,
I find freedom.

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