Poem: Not So Pinocchio

[alee_grrl]

My brother just recently started dealing with the fact that our childhood was not a very stable environment and that our mother has issues (to put it mildly). Essentially he is having the same realization that I had roughly ten years ago, which is that I had lived my life solely to please other people and I had absolutely no idea who I was outside of that. My brother is nearly four years older than I, is married and has a ten year old daughter. It was hard enough to start recognizing that things weren't right as a 24 year old with no significant other. I can not imagine how hard it must be for him. I have done what I can to be supportive. I have shared my own experience and offered to listen any time. We haven't been that close in the past ten years because he still had mom in his life (she was living with him much of that time) and I had stopped talking to her. I've had time and distance to do a lot of thinking and healing. I've offered what I can to help, including some of the books that I found most useful. I've reminded him that realizing that you aren't as fine as you thought is pretty much the hardest part of healing. Accepting that things were fucked up is hard, but worth it. I also pointed out that as kids we had no choice but to believe that things were okay. It was the only way to survive. I was struck with this idea after one of our conversations. I'm not sure if I should share it with him yet, but it's been demanding to be written. Thoughts, opinions and concrit are always welcome.

Not So Pinocchio
for my brother

We swallowed the lies like candy, sickly sweet,
and lie followed lie til we were sick with the treats.
We had no Jimminy Cricket, no Blue Fairy.
and star wishes were just hopes made empty.

Swallow the lies. Believe what you're told.
Play the part. Accept the role. Risk not
your mother's wrath. Maybe if you fit the mould
she chose, she will love you as she ought.

Those roles were chosen before we were born
boys will be charmers, active and fun, and scorn
intellectual pursuits; girls will be quiet, smart and
well-mannered, ready to perform on demand.

Honor, familial duty, fear, guilt, and the
persistent hope of love wove the strings;
real children turned puppets. Who could see?
adults need to be around to notice things.

Now as adults the strings are hard to detect
and the lies are even harder to reject.
Cutting the strings means uncertainty
relearning to walk, relearning to be.

It is time to drum our own beat,
to find our own songs, to wonder just
who we are. A question oft repeated
by everyone, not merely us.

Maybe those star wishes were long delayed
maybe one day we won't be so afraid
of being ourselves. Now we have choices
we once lacked. It is time to find our own voices.

Comments

[lynnoconnacht]

*hugs* Did you decide to share this with your brother in the end? (Er, feel free not to answer of course.)

The poem, though, makes me sad that there appear to be no comments on it. It's very... melancholy is the word I'm going for, I think. It took me a bit to catch on to the form, but I think it works nicely this way. ^-^ And it's a gorgeous use of the Pinocchio tale. I was always terribly scared of it as a child, so kudos on you for writing something that makes me like the tale. <3

It's such a sad piece, though, even though it has hope and strength at the end. Just the thought of what the past was like and what it could have been...

[alee_grrl]

::hugs back::
Thank you so much for your kind words. Pinocchio was always my least favorite fairy tale, though I didn't quite realize why until I was grown. I did share this with my brother, who found it very inspiring. Apparently he wrote a poem to his daughter shortly after reading this.

It is a terribly sad piece, and I was careful to include a trigger warning on my main reading page. I think that this is why is probably had no comments.

The first stanza really fell into place, which lead me to keep a rhyme scheme going. I was going to try to fit it into a sonnet, but ended up varying the form instead. Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback.

[lynnoconnacht]

Wow! How wonderful that it inspired a poem for his daughter too. <3