Family Secrets – a Poetry Idea

In every family there are secrets. Sometimes these secrets are connected to a photo, or a picture or a thing that is kept in a cupboard or a box.

In my family, my father’s cousin Ted kept some photos of our relatives who had been killed in the Holocaust. He kept them in this box for years and years. We only saw them after he died. He left them for us to find. The pictures were of people like my father’s uncles and aunts and cousins in France and Poland. The person who first found them was Ted’s son who opened a cupboard, found a box marked ‘Family Photos’, all sealed up. He cut it open and there were the photos! They had been in there for a very long time and Ted had never spoken about them to me or to his children.

You can read my poem and if it reminds you of any secrets, any puzzles, anything hidden away that you think about or wonder about, you could have a go at writing it down. You can use the way I’ve written about it, or you can try any way you like. I chose to write it this way because I wanted to show how the photos were inside one thing which was inside another…and so on. I did that to emphasise that it was a secret. 

Family Secret

I am the photo in the box.
I am the box in the cupboard.
I am the cupboard in the room.
I am the room in the house.
I am the house in the world.
I am the world.

I am the photo
that no one knew.
I am the photo
that was hidden away.
I am the photo
that no one spoke about.
I am the photo
of the people who’ve gone.

I am the box
that was marked with words
I am the box
that said ‘Family photos’.
I am the box
that was put in the cupboard.
I am the boxthat was sealed up with tape.

I am the room
where people sat talking
I am the room
where people sat wondering
I am the room
where people talked of those gone.
I am the room
where those that were gone
were in the photo

I am the house
where people were sad
I am the house
were people felt bad
I am the house
here people were sorry
I am the house
where people couldn’t save
those in the photo

I am the world
where people were blamed
I am the world
where people were taken
I am the world
where people were destroyed
I am the world
that found that it had been done.

I am the man
who lives in this world
I am the man
who went into the house
I am the man
who went into the room
I am the man
who opened the cupboard
I am the man
who opened the box
I am the man
who found the photo
of the people
who weren’t saved.