Missing In The Middle
Neither one place and neither the other,
Neither with Mum and neither with Brother,
Stuck in a world in the middle of two,
Feel safer in care but still missing you.
Hearing you call and the voice is so strong,
But living with you was all kinds of wrong,
I’m sitting here now and I know I’m secure,
So why do I want to return to your door?
It is in this dark middle I exist every day,
Confused I listen to the words that you say,
As you tug my heart back it has started to travel,
The risk is I know that my life may unravel.
I’m walking away from the warmth that I’d found,
As I have no control from a heart that’s unbound,
And I shut down my ears from the things that they say,
“She’s missing! Absconder! And running away”
As I turn to my street and the house that I’ve known,
It’s the place of my family but I still feel alone,
As I knock on the door I am so filled with hope,
That this time my family and I may just cope.
So they open the door and now I am in,
Mum’s looking drunk and my brother looks thin,
I look down at my legs and I ask with a tear,
If things are now better and not what I fear.
But Mum gets abusive and slurs in my face,
“Why are you not in that foster care place?”
And it’s then that it hits me, as my chest becomes tight,
I’m lost in the middle, and don’t know what’s right.
Tim McArdle
Poem representing the many children torn between the pull of their birth family and their foster family, often reported missing, often feeling lost. Inspired particularly by one young person who very recently was literally ‘missing in the middle’.