Lilias
Lilias
My mother was a beauty: a snowstorm in summer,
the whoosh of Marilyn Monroe’s skirts, a lily
squandering her brightness, skin like Grace Kelly,
but a waning moon, T.B., ghost in the mirror,
a blank page others scribbled on, a doubt,
a melting glacier, a porcelain hairline crack
filled with Kintsugi gold, Diazepam, Prozac,
white sugar, white noise, a white-out.
Rigid in death, her mouth was a black hole
I shrank from, her hands claws, her hair
greasy but she was a carapace, harmless, empty.
Whatever it is that is life, her spirit or soul
was now air, immanent, in the atmosphere,
in the silence before dawn, the light on the sea.
Shortlisted for the Wigtown prize, single poem category, 2023
and published in Aesthetica magazine, 2023.