When We Forgot How to Be Unnamed

We lost something,

but not in one clean crack.

It went quiet first.

It slipped out the back door

while we were busy naming everything,

putting labels on pain,

putting language around wounds,

putting soft little cushions

under every sharp edge of life.

At first, it felt kind.

We thought we were helping.

We taught the kids to say

I am anxious,

I am triggered,

I am traumatised,

I am not okay,

and thank God for the truth in some of that.

Some of them were drowning

and finally someone threw a rope.

But somewhere along the way,

the rope became a blanket,

then a badge,

then a room they were told to live in.

We lost the old ugly courage,

the rough one,

the one with dirt under its nails

and no pretty words for itself.

The one that said,

Get up, love, not because it doesn’t hurt,

but because the chooks need feeding,

the dog is waiting,

the rent is due,

and the sun has come up

with or without your permission.

We lost the ordinary pride

of making it through a day

without turning every bruise

into a biography.

We lost the mothers who didn’t know

how to apologise,

and the fathers who mistook silence

for strength.

We lost the children under all that.

Not dead.

Not gone.

Just standing there now,

grown tall and tender,

holding diagnoses like lanterns,

trying to see the road,

while we pretend we did not help darken it.

I mourn the time before everything had a name,

but I do not want its cruelty back.

I mourn the time after everything had a name,

because naming alone did not save us.

Somewhere between shut up

and break down,

there was meant to be a bridge.

We were meant to build that.

Instead, we built industries,

intake forms,

waiting lists,

wellness plans,

little rooms full of expensive words.

And still, somewhere,

a young person is crying over a meat pie,

a grandmother is calling police,

a mother is terrified,

a court is writing therapy

where family should have written repair.

So this is my elegy

for resilience without hardness,

for care without performance,

for pain without an altar,

for the generation we loved badly,

then studied carefully.

May something honest remain.

May we teach them language, yes,

but also legs.

May we give them names for pain,

but not make pain their only name.