In Memoriam
A poem
Cessation is all,
Nothingness, fall,
No silence is louder than the steelness of this stillness,
I stare at the white muted faces of unanswered letters,
The ones that I poured out praying for your return.
I lost dimensions and buried many selves,
Dragged along my pieces and dusted all the shelves,
It’s Mother’s Day again and absence holds my hand,
You return in dreams that I couldn’t understand…
I remember your smile through the eye-hole of memory,
Fragments of warmth that kept me clawing through those winters,
Very early in my life, it was too late
Oh! How I wallowed and swallowed, asking questions that had questions
I wonder if you recall that evening walk,
How the wind and the moon wrapped their arms around us,
How the silence of the evening gently offered up itself,
How the warmth of your touch undid that dynasty of cold.
Beads of swallowed tears now escape unto this page,
This white wall stares back and March is withering,
Mother, I hold unto that warmth, unto those moments
In my dreams they never end ,
I will live on to make you proud.
notes: Though those moments were relatively short-lived, my Mother taught me the meaning of kindness and love, the kind that perseveres and I have to say that coming to the realize and accept that she was truly no more was a shock to my consciousness that I’ve barely recovered from but the beauty, the warmth, that gentle sort of persistence, they’ve always found their way to me in times that I doubted myself. Even the ones we think are gone are always looking out for us and I’ve always wondered, if you’re happy in your dreams, does that count?
I strung this together from old letters and scribbles I wrote in my younger years when I couldn’t bear the weight of such absence, all that clawing, all that wandering and I decided that I would allow it all to fuel me, to push me towards a fuller life, one that moves with love and kindness as she showed me.
Happy Mothers Day to all the beautiful and powerful women here and out there! Thank you to the curators and editors of this amazing pub and as always, thank you for reading 🤍
