I know the truth if you'll let me show you..

My mother in a hospital bed, with
laboured breathing.
It's a white metal rail
separating me
from her, and
one plastic tube.
A lifetime of memory.
If you look inrto a mirror for a lifetime,
you will see death at work.
And I see
new wrinkles adding
themselves to the
corners of my eyes,
I see a white hair sprouted
where the rest
are dark,
I see two lines running
down towards
my breasts I have
never seen before.
I see a woman dying,
I see myself
as my mother.
A broken bottle,
an emptying vessel,
a hurrying squirrel,
no more nuts for Winter,
hopping over
to the other side
of the garden wall.

I see children,
somewhere we are
always children.
And I am a
baby wailing on a hillside,
grass blowing
around me in all
directions.

You wake up, yawn a
strange yawn, little
animal yawn, and
then you are back
in a lost world agan.
Yesterday, you
rose up like Lazarus.
Today, you are back
in unconsciousness.
Reality is a
slow, shattering wave.

Peacocks, bright lights,
fool, fool, fool you.
I am a breeze,
we are waving
on the rocks,
sinking, sailing
tides of lightening
fire and water
deep.
And this moment
feels somehow normal,
so ordinary to be
sitting with you
like this, the
trauma is somewhere
else, it is
only me and
you Mum, you sleeping,
me awake.

~~~

and more, this truth of feeling..

a swaying tree,
a tube too thick and noisy,
her warm hand.
a silver cross.

It is too many cups of tea,
it is HER EYES.
No, it is HER EYES.

No, it is MY EYES.

I am wearing her earrings - two gold plated hoops with hearts in the centre.
I am wearing her hair band to tie up my own hair, a fuschia rose.

And my Aunt tells me how much I look like my mother when she was young, and I'm surprised becasue I never thought I looked like my Mum, or like anyone in my family, in fact, except for a great uncle that I saw a picture of once. He was a sailor and he had eyebrows just like mine, and my cheekbones, my long jaw, and lips all full and pretty.

I remember the picture of my Mum holding an orange looking like Elizabeth Taylor.

I am waiting.

Drama is fun, exhilerating, exciting. Excitement is fun, exhilerating, dramatic.

Sitting here isn't any of those things.

I am a spare tyre, a key which will not fit the lock.

All I need to do is sit here and watch,
all I need is to sit here

and watch

at the bedside,
the clock ticking,
visiting time's over,
pack up this chair
and go home.