First Sentence

One of my earliest pieces, "First Sentence," was written when I was eighteen, in the long shadow of the abuse I endured at the hands of a controlling narcissist. It has passed through many iterations over the years—including one version published in Best of the Manchester Poets, a rendition I would now gladly disown. The version that follows is, I think, the truest and most fully realised form of the poem, and I now regard it as the definitive text.

First Sentence  

I cannot remember my first word,

but I do recall my first sentence:

cribbed in a box with the lid on,

kept by a familial jailer with a sour tongue,

under house arrest

where sheets were hot wet prisons.

I was moon-stricken

when hands larger than God

clawed my skin

and pulled at my hair. 

No night was safe from your finger-hooks.

No day was free of your iceberg pettiness

And petty grievances

contrived at your desk.

And look, there’s your new husband:

a grey shadow

flat and cringing,

cowering like a frightened schoolboy

detained beneath the blackboard.

You always were the one

with the chalk in your hand. 

One day I did what you

could never understand.

I walked up and out

on legs you could not cripple,

with a spine you could not bend.

I was no longer the child

in that box

In that house.

You held the keys

but I was the one who broke the lock

and opened the door.

And the first sentence I ever truly spoke

was the one you didn’t expect to hear:

I am leaving – and no, mother, I am

not coming back.