A Small Life, Repainted is a collection of poems about the quiet devastation and small survivals that shape a woman’s life

 

TITLE PAGE - (potential poetry pamphlet)

A Small Life, Repainted

Poems by Alison Friday

CONTENTS

1. Soon It’ll Be Our Turn

2. The Irony of Life: How I Lost My Garden

3. Why Families Fracture

4. Showing Up Anyway

5. One Small Corner

CHAPBOOK - ORDER

1. Soon It’ll Be Our Turn

(A poem about home, control, and the moment a metaphor becomes truth.)

2. The Irony of Life: How I Lost My Garden

(A reflective piece about overwhelm, longing, and the gardens we can’t keep.)

3. Why Families Fracture

(A generational truth telling about women carrying the emotional weight.)

4. Showing Up Anyway

(A poem essay about ND life, menopause, humour, and surviving the day.)

5. One Small Corner

(A quiet reclamation of joy, daisies, and the smallest possible hope.)

Soon It’ll Be Our Turn

Every morning I leave the driveway

and tell myself I’m lucky to have one.

I look across the road

at the house with the fresh paint,

the crisp garage door,

the neat electricity boxes

lined up like soldiers

who know exactly who they belong to.

And I whisper,

soon it’ll be our turn.

Last summer we watched the painter

stroke colour into someone else’s life.

My husband took his number,

said he’d call,

said we’d be next,

said we’d get our moment

of looking cared for.

So I let myself imagine it,

not green, not their colour,

but something soft,

something that sparks joy

when I pull out of the drive

and when I come home again.

Yesterday I said it out loud:

“Soon it’ll be our turn.”

He looked at me blankly.

“What do you mean?”

“You gave him my number,” I said.

“He said he’d get back to us this summer.”

And then the truth fell out of his mouth

like a stone dropped in water:

“Oh, he did. I just ignored it.”

Conversation over.

Dream over.

Hope over.

And suddenly the metaphor

stood there in the driveway with me.

A house without maintenance

falls quietly apart.

A marriage without care

peels at the edges.

A life without tending

rots from the inside out.

What I once mistook for love

was often control.

The coercion faded,

but the power stayed.

Nothing moves unless he says so.

Nothing changes unless he approves.

Nothing grows unless he allows it.

And here I am,

still staring at someone else’s painted door,

realising I’ve been waiting

for permission

to feel looked after.

But houses don’t heal themselves.

Couples don’t fix themselves.

Women don’t bloom

in the shade of someone else’s decisions.

So I stand in the driveway,

finally seeing the truth:

There is no home without love.

There is no “us” without care.

There is only me now,

learning to repaint my own life

one quiet stroke at a time.

The Irony of Life: How I Lost My Garden

I used to think a garden was a simple thing—

soil, seeds, water, sun.

But it turns out a garden is a mirror,

and mine showed me everything

I didn’t want to see.

The weeds came first,

creeping in quietly,

the way overwhelm does.

One day of not tending becomes two,

then a week,

then a season,

and suddenly the wild things

have taken the place of the things you planted.

I kept telling myself I’d get to it.

Tomorrow.

Next week.

When life calmed down.

When my head did.

When I felt like myself again.

But life didn’t calm down.

My head didn’t either.

And myself—

well, she was somewhere under the brambles,

waiting for someone to come find her.

People talk about losing gardens

like it’s a failure of discipline.

But sometimes it’s a failure of capacity.

Sometimes it’s a woman

who has been holding up too much

for too long,

and the garden is the first thing to go

because it’s the only thing

that won’t shout at her for dropping it.

I used to feel ashamed

when I looked at the mess.

Now I see it differently.

The garden didn’t die.

It simply grew without me.

It waited.

It softened.

It forgave.

And when I finally stepped back into it,

hands empty,

heart tired,

the daisies still lifted their faces to me

as if to say,

you’re late,

but you’re here.

And that is enough.

Why Families Fracture

People like to pretend families break

because of one big moment—

a fight,

a betrayal,

a single sharp thing.

But that’s not how it happens.

Families fracture

the way cliffs do:

slowly,

quietly,

grain by grain,

until one day a whole piece falls away

and everyone acts surprised.

It starts with the women, usually.

The ones who hold the birthdays,

the secrets,

the emotional weather.

The ones who remember who likes what,

who needs soothing,

who can’t be told the truth directly.

We are the glue,

but glue gets tired.

And when the glue cracks,

everyone blames the crack

instead of the years of pressure

that made it.

I used to think it was my job

to keep everyone together.

To smooth the edges,

translate the silences,

carry the weight of everyone’s feelings

like a tray of fragile things.

But the thing about carrying

is that eventually

your arms give out.

And when they did,

I realised something:

Families don’t fracture

because someone stops trying.

They fracture

because someone has been trying

for far too long.

And she finally puts the tray down.

Showing Up Anyway

Some mornings I wake up already tired,

as if the night did nothing

but hold my exhaustion in place.

The kettle feels heavy.

The light feels loud.

My own name feels like a task.

I move through the house

like someone wading through wet sand,

every step possible,

but none of them easy.

People think showing up

means being cheerful,

capable,

on top of things.

But sometimes showing up

is brushing your teeth

even though the mint burns your nerves.

Sometimes it’s answering one message

and ignoring five.

Sometimes it’s sitting on the edge of the bed

for twenty minutes

before you can stand.

Sometimes it’s laughing at something

that isn’t funny,

just to remind your body

what laughing feels like.

Menopause has rearranged me.

ND life has rewired me.

The world keeps asking for the version of me

I can’t be every day.

But here’s the truth I’m learning:

Showing up isn’t about being fine.

It’s about being here.

It’s about choosing to exist

in the room,

in the moment,

in the mess,

even when your whole body

is begging for quiet

One Small Corner

I can’t fix the whole house.

I can’t fix the whole life.

I can’t fix the years

that went sideways

while I was busy surviving.

But I can fix one small corner.

One shelf.

One drawer.

One patch of garden

where the daisies still believe in me.

I used to think healing

had to be dramatic—

a reinvention,

a transformation,

a rising from the ashes.

But sometimes healing

is a woman on her knees

pulling three weeds

and calling it progress.

Sometimes it’s choosing

a softer towel.

Sometimes it’s opening a window.

Sometimes it’s remembering to eat.

And sometimes

it’s standing in a tiny cleared space

that smells faintly of hope

and thinking,

This is enough for today.

This is enough to begin.