Daddy’s drunk again tonight…
Little girl of about ten
Shaking like a leaf
Standing in a corner
Scared even to breathe.
Daddy’s drunk again tonight
But that’s hardly any news
Neither is his violent temper
after he’d downed up a few.
There’s so much pressure
for a child as young as her
she can hardly keep together
as her trembling makes her faint.
She needs to stand up strong
She can not afford to fault
mummy needs her full support
She knows well…that’s her job.
Little girl of about ten
all that trembling makes her sick.
father explodes into a rage
mother goes …she has to flee.
Now she’s been left in charge
at the tender age of ten.
She goes on to do her job
Calming down her daddy’s rage
and gently coaxing him to bed.
When calm finally arrives
and the whole saga it’s over
she takes herself to bed
and starts to sob under the covers.
Little lady of about ten
still shaking like a leaf
making sure that all it’s well
Then she cries herself to sleep.
Touching poem nmod, and so sad for children who are forced to live like that.
this is lovely and so sad too. nmod….unfortunatly there are a lot of children suffering like this in the world. Good post hun 🙂
nmod – so sad, but so true all too often.
I was a little girl like this – Oh how I hate what alcohol does to some people – it ruins so many lives.
here’s another child’s point of view poem of the same genre as your poignant one.
My Papa’s Waltz
By Theodore Roethke 1908–1963
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1942 by Hearst Magazines, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1961)