Irene's poem is a string of painful questions about childhood abuse and the silence around it. The speaker asks why it happened to her, and why no adult saw what was going on: the flinching, the tears, the bruises, the fear of the dark. The "two thousand yard stare" is a striking phrase, suggesting a blank, distant look that should have alerted someone. The poem points to twelve years, from age six to eighteen, and the broken, staccato line "Twelve. Long. Horrible. Nightmarish. Years." makes the loss feel heavy and slow.
The mood is angry, bewildered and raw. Grief and betrayal run through the speaker's sense that nobody cared enough to look. The rhymes can feel almost bitter, as if she's forcing order onto something disordered. Yet the ending shifts. Using the image of a war that isn't over, the speaker refuses to accept defeat, and she hints that one day she will remember everything and the truth will be heard.