The Rainbow Ward

The Rainbow Ward

Grandma told me I was blue the day that I was born,

So blue she almost feinted

My mother the teenage school dropout

My father the unnamed secret

“He never wanted you anyway”

And I was reluctantly delivered into this perfect storm

The child that would finally affirm

Her place, a council flat, reasons to carry on.

For some of us are born

simply to adorn

The life of another.

Into adolescence,

Blue was the enduring greeting of each day

From when I woke to how I walked

To all I talked and thought throughout.

Engulfing and engorging

all that I could be,

Pervading every sentiment

a leash on being free

Shrouded from within

I grew like bonsai confined within blue porcelain

My mind and body trellised to support her self-obsession.

Maybe she thought she’d need me,

For an organ donor one day.

Only one thing was apparent to my teachers,

there was something wrong with me.

A sad child was a brat.

An ungrateful misery.

To others I was ‘fucked up’ and not to be believed.

I prayed the blue would become the deepest black.

Within two weeks it would.

The beep beep beep of blue screens

The waves of navy rushing by

The language of the unknown in a land I was not meant to be

The white coat had all the answers

I was not required to respond

The Rainbow Ward was a place for happy children.

The corridor echoed with her arrival

Each vibration bringing closer my ingratitude

A portent of the violation

I was to graciously receive

The prelude before the crescendo

The fallout of this selfish act,

her self-image slightly cracked

The blue coats pushed aside to feast on my fatality

A dramatic end to a mediocre day

To revel and recall for many years to come,

my sanity a points card in a game she always won.

This day I let the world see who she was to me.

For some of us are born

simply to adorn.

The life of another.