Daydreams

There’s an ache in my chest, a tightness

of all the emotions I haven’t been able to express.

 

For the longest while, I waited.

 

Dreams of darkened rooms

in the soul-house. I had no courage

to enter, nor to face.

 

A sea of emotional memories bopping up and down.

As they surface --

a wave crashes against my aching back.

 

Broken memories of screams and shouts, jaggered ruler

lying on the sewing machine,

pee-soiled sheets and dreams

of dirty cubicles, music sheets hammering down

the locked balcony, breaths being held

beneath the suffocating duvet.

 

A youthful helplessness, of options

I didn’t have and decisions

I couldn’t make.

 

Daydreams of another time…

of another place.