Sometimes I imagine
my mother is sitting
at the end of my bed.
Her back is slightly curved
and her sparrow frame cradles
itself around her crimson, red heart.
Her delicate hands rest upon
her pale knees,
petite legs crossed,
naked feet slightly
tapping to a silent melody.
Her eyes are blue.
Not an azure blue,
more a sunny sky blue.
The kind of blue that
fluffy clouds rest against.
A kind of faded out blue,
like a cornflower coloured
dress left on the line
in the summer sun.
Flecks of light ricochet
off her blonde locks.
A golden crown
framing her gentle face
Her lips would crease
into a mini smile-
just an ever so little curve
of her mouth,
but just enough to reach her eyes.
One hand would
absently smooth out
unseen creases in my bedding-
as if her hand so soft
and gentle could iron out
the rough and tumble
of midnight slumber.
I think I’d be little…
yes – about three or four.
I’d be made up of
all soft edges yet to be
hardened by men
or the burdens of life-
all doe eyed and playful-
dreaming of fairies
and wizards and pixies-
yet to know the burden
of loss and grief and failure and pain-
free of capitalist shackles
and patriarchal demands
and colonial confines
and all the vagaries of life.
I imagine that just before
I am to submit to rest
she’d softly sing
in a quiet voice,
as she pulled the
covers up to my chin.
I’d be safe and warm and loved.
I’d close my eyes
unafraid of the monsters
that creep in the dark,
unaware that nightmares
exist in the waking hours,
or that dreams can go
entirely unrealised.
This would be a time
way before hope is dashed,
or cynicism grew along
all my bones
like mould spores
spreading into lungs.
It would be a time
where my heart held love
and knew no rage-
a time where my spirit
soared and I could be me-
an authentic me,
not the me with
my corners cut off,
not the me origami’d
into every other shape
than my own just to fit
someone’s image of me.
So different from the me
that was brought into this world.
The me that loves
and laughs
and believes in fairy tales
and happily every afters-
the me that is fun
and quirky
and gets all too carried away
with the whimsy of life-
the me with my hurricane mind
and my poet’s heart.
But all of this is
a tale of my own creation…
a story that rests in my soul bones.
Because as I stroke
the little porcelain plate
once held in my mother’s hands,
I have to dream up
memories to nestle
in my mitochondria-
because I have
no memory of her voice,
her skin or her smile-
I know not what
filled her heart
with joy or dread.
I only know her name-
her name that settles
so easily on my lips-
her name which is
never mum or mama,
but always Glenys.
It is in these moments
that I imagine she’s not dead.
I soothe myself thinking
about the transference of energy.
Energy that never dies.
Energy that can
only be transformed.
I tell myself that it’s
what the body does
when it dies-
it alters form.
And I figure,
existence could be eternal, right?
Surely the tragedy of her death,
the very pain of her demise,
that is etched upon
every one of my bones,
and all of her hopes
and wishes and desires unfulfilled
and left discarded on
that long road
along with every
single litre of her blood
as she bled out and
expelled her very last breath
while cradled in my father’s arms –
I let those scars serve
as a symbolic reminder
of the inevitability of my death-
a memento mori, if you will.
And I imagine…
because it’s all that I can do.
Written by Tabitha Lean
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