Salach

Salach^[1]

I loved you, you know. I really did. You were so perfect, so tiny, so… new. Not worn down by the world. I could see your curiosity in how you looked at the canopy overhead as we strolled through the woods. Your little hands reached out, grasping for the colours and shapes. Our walks together through the woods and down to the river calmed me and calmed you. Your cries, so intense and piercing as they bounced around our tiny one-room cabin, were free to roam through the trees and settle where they may. Sometimes, you’d stop crying, and the wonder of the world would be clear to see in the dark pools of your eyes. Sometimes you wouldn’t. And I wept along with you.

I want you to know that I asked for help. I asked anyone who would listen, but nobody paid me any heed. Your father told me that you were my problem, that it was my fault that I fell pregnant in the first place. I’d made my bed and all that. Bastard. Your grandmothers would have loved to have helped, but they’ve long since left this world, and you don’t have any aunts. Your grandfathers and uncles are useless lumps, the lot of them. The neighbours wouldn’t listen; they took your father’s side, and both the local priest and Garda would have sent me away. I had no one; I was alone and struggling deeply.

You know, I thought about leaving, but I couldn’t just leave you all alone. I knew what that loneliness was like, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, least of all my own flesh and blood. It’s no life. You’d be better off coming with me.

People look at me with varying degrees of disgust, fear, and anger. Nobody looks at me with pity. Nobody sees the distraught mother struggling to cope with no support and no future. They see a crazy person, a lunatic, and, god help me, a murderer. They don’t see that I was doing you a kindness in the end. You’d have been doomed to repeat my story, and that’s no life. A short but beautiful existence is preferable to a long but miserable one. I’m sure you’d’ve understood.

I told you I’d join you, and I will. I thought it would be sooner, but the Guards took me away. They keep asking me all these questions, but all I can think of is you and your peaceful little face. I’ll be with you soon my little Weela Walya, and we’ll go walking again down by the river Saile^[2].