Mother

[Isagel]

This needs working on - but I just needed to get it out and away.


I do not want this,
she says.

Doubling up over the sink,
coughing
I imagine her lungs
being soft red lace
The cough a storm
rushing
tearing
this fine fabric

so fragile

my mother who always seemed like a tree,
brown steady unmovable.

I do not want this,
she says.
And she cries.
My mother who did not even cry
at grandpa´s funeral.

I stroke her back.
Trying to be a tree.

Sometimes
I make myself sick
when I
turn pain into poetry.

[amuse]

Originally posted by Isagel

Doubling up over the sink,
coughing
I imagine her lungs
being soft red lace
The cough a storm
rushing
tearing
this fine fabricthis is beautiful. i see why you ended with the last lines here, as well. but...my brother just tore his achilles tendon. it may seem cheap to be able to translate pain into words, but i was thinking of that agony, and it opened up a whole new world of empathy. so your ability to do that, and give it an image, well it shows your empathy, the soft fragility of lungs (never thought of alveoli as soft red lace before) and the "rushing tearing" is the havoc that literally rips your mother's life.
now i feel bad to comment on such a deeply personal poem.


I stroke her back.
Trying to be a tree.

Oh, Isagel. And the storm that you can't allow to tear you as it tears her. While we're all only human.
This is one of those times when words bring nothing but a deep, deep silence...

[Isagel]

Originally posted by amuse

now i feel bad to comment on such a deeply personal poem.

Oh, Isagel. And the storm that you can't allow to tear you as it tears her. While we're all only human.
[/B]


Thank you for doing it.
I was a bit afraid of posting something that was this personal.

I´m OK. Really.Sometimes I just need to write things down, and it helps. But all the kindness from friends helps too. More than I expected.

Thank you again.