I remember the words my sister and I found in a box

under Aunty’s bed when we were searching

for her lolly-tin. We never asked because we couldn’t

find the words.

But those words hung like a ghost in the shadows that we

couldn’t see but could feel –

lurking like an unfinished story behind

words that became heavier as time made their meaning clearer. 
But still there was no story. Just silence and a gaping hole

for all that is untold of a Blak woman’s life that words

in a white man’s law never can say. Or know.

The fabric of the women’s lives – like the river they

live on is calm and tranquil on the surface –

churning and turbulent below.
While my Grandmother stitched in half-light by

the fire, Aunty walked the floor in sleepless circles chased by

words that lurked in night shadows.

I remember papers that held all that is unsaid that Blak kids

find and know, always hearing stories in patches and

backstitching over time and memory to get to the beginning.
Decades later my ageing childless Aunty alone in

a house full of old calendars, clocks frozen on long ago hours –

never to tick again as if to keep them might make time stand still or

turn back broken memories.

When she takes my hand in hers –

withered and trembling and gestures with the other

to a ramshackle pile of her life’s possessions gathered on a table

where among books and brooches, photos and letters

trinkets made by nieces and nephews long gone I see a

dusty box full of words
I know without asking why she gives it to

the dreamy niece she raised who always had a pencil in her hand,

and got into trouble sometimes for asking too many questions –

who said she was going to write a story one day but

hasn’t yet because that won’t come either.

I gather all the things she wanted to keep, hold, look at

time and time again to remember. And all that she couldn’t

let go.
Inside this box is the double-walker who stalked the night –

the captured slice of a Blak woman’s life cut deep from flesh and

blood, a stolen story, a truth kidnapped, a memory held to ransom –

longing for release. If I leave it shut it will haunt me as it did her.

Like my Grandmother, I will stitch and backstitch

long into the night over time, over memory, over holes,

rips and tears with words that speak back to these words

with the story of a woman outside this box.