Education, Family, Life, Poetry, PTSD, Writing

A Better Place, a poem

We are soon moving to a place that gives us a lot of peace.

“Get up and smile,” someone says.

“You’re going to a better place.”

They say it like “All dogs go

to heaven.”

Your best pet

went to live on a farm upstate.

The battles are over,

The fires put out,

Some think I’m crazy

to compare a house

of learning

to the place

where militia hide in

steep mountains and caves.

My father served in Vietnam.

He says, “You get out of there.”

Mom says, “I hate that school.

I want my daughter back.”

I am going to a better place

where I see teachers smile.

Then I hear someone yell,

I slip into a memory.

My child, yes, my child

pulls hair,

He gets lost in the shuffle

of the kids

punching,

kicking.

I see my girl on the ground.

She sits legs out like a baby girl

on a carpet crying loud for…

“Becca, Becca, it is me.”

Mom stands there next to the kids;

the ones I call

son and baby girl.

My daughter as a baby four years ago.

By Rebecca T. Dickinson

2 thoughts on “A Better Place, a poem”

    1. Thank you very much! The writing I’m doing right now is coming from years of very complicated emotions and events that forever changed me.

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