Just keep quiet, dry your tears and eat the fishcake
I hear my mother’s voice from a happier time
Perhaps childhood
The tears started in childhood
I would cry over everything
My brother has used drugs
Every single day for the past twenty years
Just keep quiet, Abigail
Keep the peace
Don’t start the Third World War
Just keep quiet
Your father has cancer
Your father is ill
Your father needs peace of mind too
Just keep quiet
As the world falls around you
Into the quiet deep
Into the lake of darkness
Into the abyss
Into the frozen sea
The Dead Sea
The Strait of Hormuz
Just keep quiet
Please, keep quiet
You don’t have to battle your brother
And win
It is a fight you will never win
You can’t change a drug addict
You can’t force a gambling man to stop gambling
Only the police can interfere with
A perpetrator of domestic violence
But what can they do about a woman
Sewn up in darkness
But what can they do about a man
Who shows no remorse
There is nothing you can do
You can’t change your brother
You can’t change the situation
You can’t fix him
Just keep the peace
You can’t argue, and you can’t reason
With a drug addict
They think that they are right
They think that you are wrong
I won’t talk to you, brother,
Leave me alone
Please, don’t talk to me
Live your life
You’ve made your choice
I can’t live your life for you
Sometimes I talk to God
Sometimes I pray
God, can you hear me?
God, are you listening?
Mr Lodewyk says that God
Is aware of everything
So, Mr Lodewyk, God must be aware of this
The situation that I am in
I ate the fishcake
And it turned into a whale
Inside my belly
It tastes like paper
Even with sauce
It tastes like paper
Did you know
That you could
Swallow your tears?
I look at my mother
Is my mother
The lighthouse
Or the sea?
Is she the darkness?
Is my father
The shoreline
Or the rocks?
Is my father, perhaps, the light?
I fight with my brother every single day
I just want to stop fighting with him
Isn’t he tired of fighting
Sometimes I make him a cup of coffee
I pour love and forgiveness into the coffee
I spoon psalms into the coffee
When I place the cup in my brother’s hands
I wait patiently until it begins to sing a hymn
Sometimes I think he is darkness
Sometimes I think he is the light,
Or returning to the light
Sometimes I think he is the lighthouse
Sometimes I think he is the green waters
Of the sea turned into darkness
Under the moonlight
Sometimes he is the shoreline
Sometimes he is the rocks
Please tell me, what else am I supposed to do?
Dear God, what else am I supposed to do?
Just keep quiet
And knit manifestos
Into the scarf
you are making
Knit poetry
Knit sad poems
And love poems
And political poems
For your niece
Pour love and forgiveness
Into the scarf
That you are knitting
Maybe if I can’t save my brother
Maybe I can save my niece
I got a telephone call from heaven
I look at the sky, at the clouds, at the coins of rain
Maybe, says my paternal grandmother’s voice
Who had to face addiction with her sons
And her husband
Alcoholism and drug addiction
Her eldest son was a drug dealer
I keep swallowing my tears
And eating paper
I am so quiet
I am so quiet
I am so quiet
My brother hovers
I go to my room and lie on the bed
And my body turns into the Dead Sea.