
I was 17.
I’d had surgery not long before the summons.
They’d removed a lump from my breast.
& It still hurt.
I still hurt.
‘wean the baby off the breast .. so there’s no milk ..’, had been the doctors orders.
I did it.
Apparently it was for ‘our’ health.
.
I wore all black to court.
I was Nervous.
Actually my chest was so tight I could hardly breathe.
I walked into the dusty old room with the tables arranged in such a way it suggested I wasn’t there for a light chat & cuppa tea & I was gonna lose, no matter what I said or did.
I listened.
Watched & Listened.
Noone Looked at me though.
Not actuals at me.
They browsed my face.
That’s how they roll though. Browsing.
Same people I persumed lived in those pretty houses. that don’t come out for beaten brown womxn.
@ court, when they had finished pillaging my character & personhood, I walked out & I was no longer a mama.
I was half a mama.
Joint guardianship or something like that, is what they declared.
it meant Id have to continue swallowing my voice. Noone was interested in truth here.
I guess I’d thought up until then, that it was surely going to get better.
That Jesus Christ wasn’t really this fucken cruel.
But I was wrong.
kpm©