PTSD

I have known Robin Harvey for a very long time, since we were little more than children really. Robin was brilliant and beautiful and it was clear that she was going places. She went on to a professional career as an award-winning reporter, editor, columnist, critic and public editor at The Toronto Star. All the while she was hiding her deeply wounded soul. Her new poetry collection reflects on the trauma of her childhood, a life spent in recovery and her journey through healing.

Here is a poem from the collection:

    Little Red Riding’s Tears        

           I am

         a poet, a liar, a slut, a nun, a soothsaying seer

         who no longer comes undone

         reared in a body with a mutton-penned mind 

         looped in an endless glitch in time

         my little-lamb ears, stained and sheared

         by the tint of pictures from yesteryear.

        I was

        a woman who rocked babies in a lambskin, leather coat of arms 

        safe in sugar-spice layers from little-girl harms

        until I gobbled up all the big-bad-wolf nights.

        Ate the jutting jaw

        and spit out the fist that warped 

        all reason and insight.

        Now I sing a new lullaby at night.

        Goodbye, baby bunting,

        let Daddy come a-hunting

        to fetch his little rabbit skin –

        I’ll unwrap his baby bunting sins.

Buy it here