It came to this, the panic at not being loved,
an overdose in the middle of the morning.
She slept for five days
strapped down in a hospital cot,
and when she woke to stew in her shame,
her father was by her bedside.
For a moment as long as a word of praise, neither spoke.
In that small silence, questions ripened.

She stood waiting for an ambulance
to take her to a psychiatric hospital.
She was dressed in a hospital robe and booties,
one size fits all, worn thin by other people’s fear.
The linoleum was as cold as the sea in winter.
She held a paper bag containing a toothbrush
and a copy of Tribune, which a cleaner had given her.
The air tasted bitter, of walnuts gone black in the shell.

– Kate Jennings, ‘Father and Daughter’, in Cats, Dogs and Pitchforks (Port Melbourne: Heinemann, 1993), 14.