I should be better

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I should be better

I should be better at letting go. I’m not. I should scatter her ashes, dive into a wave and there, beneath the surface of the water, release her. Free her from the prison of my anger and resentment. Free her from the agony and tangible sadness that engulfs my soul, release her before it’s too late before I too fade to dust, and she’s left in a box in someone’s bottom drawer or an attic, forgotten. The child that should have been.

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Gone home

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Gone home

The snail carries its home on its back and keeps growing that home as it needs to, though I like to imagine it can, like a hermit crab, discard one home for another when the first just won’t do. A falling star, like the one I saw above the mountains on the night you left us, shoots off into the atmosphere and burns itself off. Where have you gone, little one? Where did you find to make your home, alone, in the wilds, without me?

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The keeper

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The keeper

It’s late afternoon, Mother’s Day 2020, my ninth Mother’s Day without Anja. We walk across campus, keeping 2 metres distance between us and other families, this strange new normal we’ve already learned to accept. The children stop to climb a tree. I stoop down. A smooth round pebble nestled in a patch of bulbous brown mushrooms has caught my eye. I pick it up, rub it clean, pocket it. A keeper.

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Peripheral

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Peripheral

In my peripheral vision, I can sometimes see a fuzzy outline. A silhouette of a chubby baby that should be here too. It’s easy to become distracted by that ghost. I try not to get too lost in that because I know that he’s just in my head and there are so many other directions that I’m pulled towards. But sometimes it’s nice to have a ghost for company when I’m going through the motions.

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