Written by Bronwen Griffiths
Content Warning: Child loss and Abusive confinement
SHATTERED TEARS | Photograph by Joanne Macias
Is hard and cold under her feet, and the night is longer than Ariadne’s thread.
If she could lie down on softness like the downy feathers of a duck. If the light would arrive.
If her voice turns hoarse with calling but no one comes and she cries and her legs tremble and the pain is bigger than the world outside.
If she had a hand to hold, any hand. If her mother were here.
If the world outside is a locked door and the door stays locked no matter how long she cries.
If she had listened. If she had not done that thing. If she could slip through the keyhole like a ghost.
If the blood gushes and she pushes and hollers and the baby comes.
If the midwife were here. If she knew what to do. If someone were here.
If the baby comes and the baby is not breathing not crying not moving and the door is locked and no one comes and the baby turns blue and she lays him cold on the concrete floor and the door is locked and no one comes.
If she could turn back time.
If her tears are locked like the door and when they unlock the door it is too late.
She is stronger than their locks and indifference, stronger than their brutality. Now her voice cuts through the pain to speak her truth.
“This is injustice,” she says. “This is the wrong. This is the way you make it right. This is the way you listen.”
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Bronwen Griffiths writes both longform and shortform fiction. Her flash pieces have been published online and in print in the UK, USA, and New Zealand. She won the Mslexia Flash Fiction prize last year and has appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50. She lives in East Sussex, UK.