I dreamt of the darkness again, the tears and the struggles, the pain of my own long ago death, of the loss of my innocence to tragedy, betrayal, bloodshed and fear on those many lost days at the hands of a father’s rage and the long hours in the rushed moves in the middle of the night from the homes that housed our family’s secrets, our ghosts that we hoped would remain in their Silent keeping of our leaving yet something still follows through time, death and distance; Still the whispers of the dead and buried things we left behind echo eerily as still I, alone now, desperately try and move beyond the sound, the sorrow and the dark memories that will not let me forget, ever shadowing the light that was denied them in my own desperate attempt to survive a nightmare which has hunted and haunted me from my childhood on……

Words/Photo © Debbie Berk 2016