In the glow of contentment can be found
Coals of sadness that flare and sweat.
Life slips by and doubts are drowned
But still those embers smoulder and fret.
Doubts she had, but buried them deep
Beneath a life in normality cloaked.
But still, at times, in disturbed sleep
She found old fires quite soundly poked.
Her sister befriended, lost to view,
Taken away by a fiend so young
Into a life that was bright and new,
Petunia left on life’s bottom rung.
And death it followed on behind,
Waiting to claim her sister’s life.
Leaving Petunia in grief entwined
But following death came living strife.
The child was raised without due love
And words harsh thrown into its core.
No velvet fist soft’ned the iron glove
That Aunt Petunia forever wore.
Days were long and filled with fury,
Shouts and squalls, ferocious fights.
Uncle Vernon standing, judge and jury,
Permitting countless, hurtful slights.
And what could she tell him at the end
What could she possibly say?
There are no words for her to mend,
No platitudes to save the day.
It hovered, painfully, on her lips
But failed to come, was eclipsed.
A small word stuck in her throat
And on that word she almost choked.
She swallowed hard but could not deliver
And the word was buried with a shiver.