April 27, 2022

We have lift off!

The birds of the air know the direction they take With legs elongated to full satisfaction Their line produces an arrow like movement Whereby they pierce the sky with vibrant flashes of colour and splendour. [...]
April 26, 2022

Eating Pomegranates

At about this time, the Beast is born. He appears one morning after the children have gone to school. The house is quiet, and I have crept along the corridor to clean my teeth. Dental hygiene is very important when on chemotherapy; all the leaflets will tell you. 
April 25, 2022

Washing

I perch on the edge of a broken wooden bench. Laundry dances in the breeze against a backdrop of Atlantic. Mists are creeping ever nearer until the ocean wears the same grey [...]
April 21, 2022

Let’s Talk About Cancer

‘I’m sorry to tell you, but you have cancer’. Since 2005 I’ve been told this three times. It doesn’t get any easier to hear those words but as any cancer patient will tell you, you become very familiar with all of the medical jargon very quickly. What is less easy to deal with is the way non- medical people speak to you.
April 5, 2022

Auburn

Even a whole tribe cannot watch all day and all night over a mind that can wander dangerously, in its nightgown, in the streets, too near the river and the docks and no sense of present danger, just the call of a childhood home long, long gone. They were defeated by their care for her in the end and it brought back fear to my mother’s life, the fear it would happen to her too, as it had her grandfather years before. They all felt the abyss that seeps into your soul when your mother does not know you anymore. For how then are you to know yourself?
April 5, 2022

Notes from the Kingdom of the Sick

She had seven sons (really), and the seventh was a healer. So she was absolutely certain that she was going to recover. Other family members spoke to the dead. Sometimes we would go back to the waiting room after our treatments so she could finish whatever story she was telling that day. The little cabal split up and all went our own ways when our treatments were over, but I hope she is still out there basking in her son’s healing vibes and telling her stories.