Months she spent reduced to memo size
in Tuam Mother and Baby Home.
Spidery script fails to prise

recorded details so well disguised.
Faded ink’s shrunken all she mourned,
months she spent reduced to memo size.

Shamed. Her family broke all ties.
Flesh and blood turned to stone.
Spidery script fails to prise

thick folders, blank as empty skies.
Echoes of an endless rosary drone,
months she spent reduced to memo size.

Headed paper stamps the truth of lies.
Swollen days worked to the bone.
Spidery script fails to prise

how fast her spirit dies
in Tuam Mother and Baby Home.
Left behind, her son’s hungry cries
spidery script fails to prise.

Eileen Casey, originally from Co Offaly, lives in south Dublin. She is the author of seven poetry collections. The Oliver Goldsmith International Poetry Prize and a Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Fellowship feature, among her awards.