UNHINGED

• Peta Sutherland, Grade 6
• Poetry
• 2021

Beer cans on the floor, clothes reek of vodka, soju too.
After hanging with your junkie friends your rude vocabulary grew.
For you, one is too many; a thousand not enough,
You ignore people’s warnings with a holler or a huff.
You chose to take it further, so then you turned to drugs.
Heroin your closest friend, your others being thugs.
Tinted teeth, wheezing lungs, skin of pale and white.
Your deteriorating health made you quite an awful sight.
Vacuous eyes, a vacant smile, to pass time you’d scream at walls.
Ask for help? Impossible! You’d reply with a slap and a squall.
You used to call me daughter, but you didn’t like the name.
Before my peers you made this clear and now I’m red from shame.
You never really loved me, you made this clear as day.
Then one day you had enough, left me by the railway.
Because you rejected me, I always feel remorse.
Maybe it was all my fault, in regret I weep with force.