How quickly I go
from grown and composed
to that little girl waiting wet-eyed
in the car-loop line.
Resigned and terrified
that this is the time
her mum doesn’t show,
that she’s all on her own,
and nothing anyone would say
could make her gasping slow.
Of course, mum always arrived
punctual and baffled to find
her daughter an incoherent
tousle of hair and tears.
“I’m here-
I’m here.”
Whatever happened to
Pavlovian conditioning?
Why couldn’t that little girl learn
she was not made for leaving?
Why can’t I shake that
car-loop line feeling?
It’s the same pang that strikes
when you wake in the night
from a dream too dreadful
for dreaming
and are met with the dark,
your thumping heart,
stranded in a space
beyond fleeing.
I think we all harbour this dread,
with our own cortextual twist,
an aversion to abandonment,
and prolonged loneliness.
pm poetry 