YVE LOUIS
The Knot
- Out of focus, this stranger
- my mother
- sits shivering in full sun,
- vibrates like dune grass
- edge to wind.
-
- I try to see, reclaim
- what light has bruised into shadow:
- moon lakes in the hollow cheeks,
- sea caves, the scooped sockets of her
eyes.
- I am blinded by bone-light
- ridging white through skin
- that quivers with each breath,
- every pore needed to sieve air.
-
- She waits for me to recognise her
- in negative, these last images
- transparent
- over the remembrance of her face.
- Her lips are pulling drawstrings
- around the words she shapes:
- Be happy. Be glad for me.
-
- My happiness is no longer in her power
- but I hold on, her child again.
- My hand in hers we unravel cords,
- pull out entanglements.
- We tie, untie,
- neither one of us released.
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