Mother

Relationship status with my mother?

It’s complicated.

She bore me at age 20

risking two lives aplenty

in an age where hospitals were inhospitable.

I, ejected from the womb too soon

She, ejected from the room too soon.

Dismissed! With the line-

“Your child will be ready in 6 weeks”

Like a click and collect order online.

A baby herself, ignorant and naïve

she returned to work - trying to believe.

But with empty arms was she even a Mum?

The pain in her tum

and the blood leaking from her

A reminder that something did occur.

Weeks pass and she returns to a tiny relative

a relative stranger

now out of danger.

Awkwardly she held the infant.

As staff approached with syringe

the child clung to her chest and cringed.

Wide-frightened eyes.

Whimpering cries.

“She knows me” mother thinks and

in that instant she felt like a real mother and with instincts

she rocks the baby with soothing sighs. Shhhh.

Today – in a more hospitable hospital,

daughter watches mother - who is bald like a baby.

The needle is pressed

into mother’s chest-

mother and daughter wince in unison it seems.

The cocktail oozes into mother’s bloodstream

delivering both devastation and hopes and dreams.

Eyes lock.

Fear unspoken.

Wishing for simpler times

when the word 'cancer' was not

so lodged on tongues and hearts and minds.

Only now daughter hides her whimpering cries

And privately longs for mother’s soothing sighs.

Both dread the looming goodbye.