Alana Valentine

“The dingo’s got my baby’.
It’s a statement of fact.
And it’s very clear.
I know now that it’s considered too clear.
Apparently it would have been more believable if I had
choked, hysterical.
‘In the tent … a … a … get out …’
Oh, I know what they would have liked,
‘Get away from her,
Get away, you,
Get away from my baby’.
They wouldn’t have made fun of that.
‘Oh God, Oh God, Oh God!’
Or just a blood-curdling scream
and instant tears.
But that’s not what I do
that’s not going to help
I thought of the baby not myself
I didn’t get emotional or hysterical
because I wasn’t thinking of myself
I was thinking there might still be a chance
so I give the news as clearly and precisely as I can,
‘A dingo’s got my baby’.
So that they don’t have to waste time on
‘What is it? What’s happened? What’s wrong?’
I just screwed it all up into what’s happened
and how and the race to fix it.
Because you’re in it
it's happening
and she’s gone
and you can’t undo it
and you can’t unlose her
and you can’t for a moment
indulge your feelings
so you yell,
‘The dingo’s got my baby!’
And that’s where it begins.”
― Alana Valentine, Letters to Lindy

“Dear Lindy,
Over ten years ago a ten and a half foot Amethystine python tried to take my not quite two year old son from his bed… this weekend I attended a writer’s workshop with… Kate Llewellyn and after reading the enclosed poem she said I MUST send it to you and so here it is…
The Letter I should Have Written to Lindy Chamberlain
I believe you, Lindy,
I know that even now with all that is tamed
the Wild is always near
In the black of night
I lifted my child from his winter bed
only to feel a cold weight, skin to skin
along my length.
Python jaws around my baby’s leg.
Two day’s later on TV,
whodunnit: the Dingo or the Bitch
But I believed you and I wonder
Would they have hissed at me on the steamy courthouse steps:
‘The snake is innocent.”
― Alana Valentine, Letters to Lindy