Requested
Apology

You requested an apology,

several times, if I ever "wanted to see my daughter again"

in all these documents:

thousands of files building a paper fortress

many layers thin within

monetary worth of legal whores

social workers, police and all the vapid "family" labelled "legal" soldiers

skeletal, deranged figures clamouring about the disparate London town—Baby P predators of Haringey clawing to the opportunity,

estimated value of invented kith and kin bought by intoxicating nameless guests

preying on sins of Others, navigating channels of vulnerability

feeding the beastly demon who made its home in your bald, hard, empty head

and my American accent provoking so many cringes at mere voice, even in the courthouses

especially in the patriarchal British courts

I knew only impressions when I first met you.

I knew I'd seen your head in a dream eight years earlier and a beautiful little girl was twirling around –

the ceiling was glass, the snow covered everywhere.

If failure to recognize the simple symbolism of the dream as a warning —

I could be profoundly apologetic, for that.

Only she wouldn't be alive if the ominous warning, back then,

succeeded in my initial rejections of you.

I didn't socialize beyond limited intimate bonds formed in niche artistic and intellectual European circles, on the continent

I didn't like or trust too many people in general—so many seemed to feel so little

and care even less than they could feel for so few.

You homed in on levels and intricacies of my human weaknesses and vulnerabilities—

your game of demon chess began from the moment of our first encounter,

only you knew we were playing

You could draw me into your web of thousands of public guests,

most of which I was bound to repel, before I even understood the many layers

social strata, intricacies of the complex network, your psychopathic master strategist

uncannily mimicked the

Argiope aurantia,

stabilimentum: the ultraviolet lure, the invisibility cloak, the structural sabotage

I make it clear from here,

as I move into your requested apology—that in retrospect:

I am indeed profoundly sorry

La force sans direction devient faiblesse, et la bonté sans limite devient une prison.

my foolishness, nativity and blind desires

enabled ensnarement,

slow crush of my psyche,

all those years

dragging me,

consequently

eventually,

so too, my beloved Cléophée —

through putrefied mud.

I am sorry that I was so puerile and naïve deciding to pro-create with a man I knew so little,

in a foreign country working voluntarily building a charity.

I am so sorry it took me so long to finally recover—

from all the violence: physical, mental, emotional torture.

I am sorry I understood so little about the profound level of corruption,

discrimination, insidious wasteland of family justice systems,

that no "family" ever enters, if they come from a wealthy or strong united family –

and without a penny to my name, never stood a chance, in retrospect,

in the thick of it all, holding onto my baby for dear life –

ever believing we'd make it across the pond to safety,

even after you'd desecrated the most sacred innocence of your own child,

and she was courageous enough on her own to alert the authorities without me present.

I am sorry that it has taken me this long to heal from a decade of torture, and rise

I am sorry I was so slow recovering

Birthday

42 hours of labour, my love, I would give you 42 hours more and days even,

just to feel you again in my arms

I suspect your father knew from the start he was going to create a dynamic

where he could steal a small little innocent girl from her mother,

he just didn't know exactly how it would play out, initially

And God, maybe God knew all along that in order for your mother to find her way,

alone, wandering out into this great big world—

only then could she face her darkest fears,

faced by the greatest anguish and despair imaginable –

only then could she make her way to the light

and finally become whole.

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

— Dante, Inferno, Canto I

I kept on it so many years, chasing every document, file, fact, evidence,

consumed by the clear and present danger—

it was all there in front of them, why were they so wilfully blind,

why would they let my baby suffer such terror?

The more ferocity I fought them with, the further they tore you away from me,

until eventually you were gone.

I watched in horror, on my knees, feet and hands bound behind my back

as they let him desecrate the sacred,

take my innocent baby girl and torture you every way he knew how,

knowing whatever harm or suffering he put you through, I would feel too.

It was me he wanted to harm; me he wanted to torture.

To be or not to be, that is the question –
whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the swings and arrows of outrageous fortune
or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.

— Shakespeare

I never gave up, not for one second, not one breath, trying to find my way back to you.

I only eventually accepted the only way to move closer on the chessboard

to knock down the deranged self-appointed king,

(born on the same day as King Henry VIII,

who'd killed six of his wives, beheaded most of them, tortured them),

was to move to the other side of the world,

where I could earn enough money to secure us a decent lawyer,

and in a land where sexual molestation of children is punishable by death.

Only there could I heal myself as well—

enough to expand my heart, liberate my spirit, rise outward beyond the flesh and bones.

I am not my body, I am not even my mind,

a hundred thousand times of breath

until I could grow enough strength, resilience, courage,

forgiveness and acceptance of God's will and all my own shortcomings,

to overcome, put down my swords all the weapons, artillery

and simply walk my way across the buried innocence,

embodying every fragment knowing what it feels like to be fully alive

and shielded from any further terror,

before I come to collect you.

"I come from where I desire to return."

— Beatrice, Inferno, Canto II · Lines 43–75

There is no journey without language,

The blessed don't give a damn about the damned.

The damned only care about the damned; about themselves.

Desire of the damned is to destroy.

Why does the blessed need to only trust a poet

to lead someone on a journey across the universe.

Desire is the ultimate way humans express themselves closest to God.

Desire of the poet to create new form.

Creation, not destruction.