One day I saw my mother clearly. She stood like a
little girl, one foot hooked over the back of the other.
She looked very tired.
All the trinkets she handed down to me. Opalescent
fears. The stink of empire. A little carved box full
of delicate resentment. The garnet of betrayal.
Hidden behind an emptied language, that swallowed
girl.
My mother's envious eye. My mother's knife, blue
in the bombshelters. My mother's tiny hands.
What fable of redemption rattles through those paranoid
phylacteries?
Love as privation. Power's panicked maintenance.
The baroque aristocracies of blame. Time uselessly
sifting through a frozen drawing room. Martyrdoms of
teeth.
A faecal madness hunting through the gloom. All those
blank daughters.