Silent Movies

Childhood was a silent movie:
"Children should be seen and not heard."
"Go to your room and dont come out 
till you have a smile on your face."
Silent movie: the bedroom, 
children shaking with fear in their beds,
at the bumps and crashes and shrieks 
in the Big Peoples' Room,
the sound track of childhood.

A silent movie: following my mother out
behind my father's coffin.
"We have a long row to hoe."
Then the movie became really silent:
her locked in her loneliness,
me mute with so much pain inside,
and no way to figure it out,
no one to talk to.

Pain is anger turned inwards.
It took decades to work it all out,
let it all go.
Just in time for my children's anger
to begin to surface,
making me long for
the days of
silent movies.