This painting was done by my daughter a year ago while she staying with her father and I after leaving an abusive marriage. It reflects what she was feeling at the time and in this poem I do my best to express those feelings as I know a little about those feelings myself having grown up in a dysfunctional family, the daughter of an abusive, alcoholic father, a witness/survivor of domestic violence because yes, the children suffer too.
Strangle hold the heart
suffocating in the dark
of these emotions
strange
and I am all but
undone, poisoned
by the pain of a
toxic love
Debbie Berk /
Painting Amber Berk