I remember the night when my world turned cold,
When you chose his arms over mine, left me to hold
The shadows of a childhood, broken and torn,
A daughter abandoned, a heart forlorn.
In our little house, the walls whispered pain,
Your love was a ghost, a faint, fleeting strain.
I watched from the doorway, a silent, small wraith,
As you slipped into darkness, forsaking your faith.
Your promises shattered, like glass on the floor,
Each piece cut my soul, left me yearning for more.
A mother’s embrace, a whisper, a song,
But you chased his shadows, and I was all wrong.
Years passed in silence, in shadows and fears,
My heart ached with longing, soaked with silent tears.
I grew in the darkness, where love doesn’t tread,
With dreams made of sorrow, and words left unsaid.
Then one fateful evening, the years brought us face,
Your eyes met my own in a cold, empty space.
You reached out in tremors, a ghost of regret,
But the wounds you had carved, they had not healed yet.
I spoke with a voice that trembled and shook,
Recounting the nights in the shadowy nook,
Where I waited and wondered, why I wasn’t enough,
Why his love was more, and mine was so tough.
I told you of nights when the silence would scream,
Of the tears that would fall, in an endless stream.
Of the dreams that were crushed, of the love that I craved,
Of the child you abandoned, the heart you enslaved.
You wept with the truth, in the cold, bitter air,
But the scars of the past, they were still there.
I forgave but remembered, as I turned to depart,
Leaving you with the echoes, of a long-broken heart.
In that moment of sorrow, of truth and despair,
You saw in my eyes, the life you laid bare.
A mother who lost, what she once chose to leave,
A daughter who found strength, in the ache and the grief.
So I walked away slowly, with tears in my eyes,
Leaving you in the shadows, with your silent goodbyes.
For I was the daughter, who survived through the pain,
And you were the mother, who lost more than she gained.
© Ifedolapo Ogunniyi
2024
Ifedolapo Ogunniyi 