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Puppet on a String
Mary Madec

I never saw your small room
Only the contractions of the walls at home
When you were packed away

All on the list into your hard suitcase
I wondered whether you liked wearing
The dressing gown and slippers

I needed the light on to sleep. Home
Was not the same without you, especially bedtime

As days went into weeks, each night
We all knelt down and joined our hands

My mother led the God bless Jamie
Up in Dublin , far away from home

I couldn't really understand why you had to go
I couldn't understand what you did all day

When it came to mealtimes, did you get mashed potato
And homemade bread? And when you were lonely at night
Rocking from side to side-did you look at the moon?

I hoped you were at home in the sea of tranquillity

They got on the phone and told us you cried
For three days. I think they all thought you weren't able

To produce real tears. Though you were homesick, I was glad
When they said you could sing Puppet on a String

So I sang the words for you: I wonder if some day that you'll say
That someday that you'll say…you want to come home

On our first visit to that big place it took a long search to find you
I spotted you behind the chicken-wire fence at the bottom

Of the play yard. Mammy said later that you were pale and thin
No roses in your cheeks from city air

You were making wiper movements with your hands
Barely glanced up at us yet noted in an eyelid flicker

That we had come

When we left, I said, ‘Mammy, we can't leave him alone
The family here is too big, he knows no-one'

If I could have said, ‘there's only half of me at home
Since he went away,' I would.

Instead I looked

Through the windows of the train
At the world unravelling
Spelling out two words on the foggy glass: Jamie Home

Mary Madec comes from Mayo but has lived in Philadelphia, Dublin and now Galway. She started writing seriously last year and has since been accepted for publication in Crannóg and the SHOp. She was also invited to read her work in the over Edge series in Galway this autumn.