Mother

You cradle me, vacant. Your mind has been wandering lately, looking towards easier times, and looking back, mourning them. The life you knew is over, gone forever.

He brings you tea and toast and you thank him, but no smile breaches your lips. You’re too tired to feign love and softness. You reserve it all for me because you know I need it, but I can feel its emptiness - a husk of what you wish it was. Will this ever end, you wonder. It seems infinite now. Arduous. Impossible.

Today you’re painting my room, from dandelion yellow to duck egg blue. Perhaps that will make you want to be in here.

I watch from a mat on the floor, fists plugging my mouth, eyes wide, kicking. He comes in and offers to help, but you want to do this, for me, for you. He gets on the floor and tickles my tummy, but I don’t smile much, and you point that out again.

What if it’s your fault? What if you weren’t happy enough when I was born and now I’m imprinted with melancholy?

Don’t be silly. That’s what he always says when you voice a concern, and every time, you retreat further and further into that shell you live in, inside your mind.

I grow, and your worries shift. Should you have another child? Someone for me to play with. You’re busy trying to keep your art alive. You spend hours in your studio, hunched over canvases of watercolours, African animals and numbers in black and gold. Things for parents to place in their children’s rooms, to mark the milestones, keepsakes. The first weeks, the first Christmas, the first year. All the things you couldn’t find happiness in when they were mine.

I’m right here, and yet you’re lonely. So am I. And so is he.

The sibling you wanted for me doesn’t make it. You’re sad, but mostly, you’re relieved.

You take me to the beach and I climb on the red jagged rocks, watching you as you walk in the shallows. The cold waves lick your ankles and splash up your calves. I can feel your restlessness, salty like the sea. Even in these peaceful moments I sense your mind, somewhere else, somewhere out there. You’re never here, with me.

You can feel the tide of your life, pulling on you, pulling you away from me.

You’re older now. He is gone, lost long ago to wrong words and stubborn silences.

I turn twenty-one, and at my birthday party you give a speech. You tell me I am my own person now, that I’m a woman, and it’s time I made it on my own.

We stop moving through this life together. You get what you’ve wanted since the day I was born: solitude. I don’t need you, you think, because I’m not a child anymore. You are free to enjoy your life, finally.

You no longer feel the guilt you felt when I was a baby, you accepted it long ago, and then became immune it.

I cradle her, vacant. My mind wanders, looking toward easier times, and looking back, mourning them. And I finally understand. It’s arduous, all-consuming. I don't live for myself anymore - I live for her. Her every need, her every want... her happiness.

I understand you now. It's not your fault. You couldn't have known until you did it. We can never know until we try. You weren’t meant for this journey.

But I am.

She stirs, her tiny body moving against mine, soft yet strong, and I return, here, now.

I hold no blame for you.