HOW MOTHER LOOKED.

A GIRL'S GRIEF FOR HER MOTHER.

You want to look how Mother looked.

Makeup she used to use lies on her

Dressing table in the room father has

Had locked up. You have secreted the

Key and unlocked and closing the door,

Are sitting facing your image in the mirror’s

Glass you’ve propped against a chair. You

Do not have your mother’s hair. You have

Her eyes, Father said, although he says it

Less now since her death, as if stealing

From the dead. You want to transform

Yourself into her; be the woman she was;

Have her beauty; have her smile; her gentle

Manner. Cancer took her like thief at night;

Reduced her to a bag of bones and hanging

Skin, pale and thin. Forget that image, Father

Chides, cast it away, lock behind the mind’s

Dark doors. You want to look how Mother

Looked before her sad demise, before cold

Cancer’s deceit and lies. Still a child, Father

Says, you have all your life to live; leave your

Grief behind, but you want to be as Mother

Was, like the coloured picture in your mind.

Author's Note

PAINTING BY GEORGE HUGHES.