9000 Days by Bianca Butler

Senior Poetry entry

Dedicated to the victims of the Irish Magdalen Asylums

A priest’s sweet song prepared two lovers for their wedding bed
While upstairs your uncle’s child turned your whiteness to blood red
Like stale breadcrumbs you were tossed away into some distant haze
Sucked down into the quicksand, there to spend your every day

And they said you were like Magdalene
That detergent scrubbed her slate to clean
Your innocence was sold and dressed in shame
They told you lies, they criticised
Till the greenness faded from your eyes
And I knew that you would never be the same

Your beauty, free of virtue, your downfall in masquerade
Everyday you found your family as the pony on parade
Dichotomy, you stood alone in the centre of a crowd
When lightning flashed you disappeared into the thundercloud

And they said you were like Magdalene
That detergent scrubbed her slate to clean
And a part of you, it died there in the pain
Alight with blame, inside you flamed
You bit your lip and played their game
And I knew that you would never be the same

A little child, bastardised, the victim of the crime
That in a moment could be gone and not harboured for all time
Your gentle heart, your cry for love, but deaf ears turned aside
And all the while your murderers waited for you to arrive

And they said you were like Magdalene
That detergent scrubbed her slate to clean
In the dead-end halls you lost your very name
You kept the peace, lived on your knees
Grace became a distant fantasy
And I knew that you would never be the same

9000 days, so very few
Before your body said goodbye to you
And the starving spirit slipped into the grave
When perfect vision’s eyes turned blind
The truth was sentenced to your mind
And without you things will never be the same…