April 27, 2022
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
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
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
‘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
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
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.