Garden

So a garden is new.

It’s so living and everything.

And I have to say thank you.

I have to do all the things

that my feet put in front of the other.

But I’ve lost my mother,

my confidant, my drinking buddy, my friend.

People keep saying this isn’t the end.

But it is, isn’t it? How can it not be?

The funeral, the priest and the ashes.

She’s never going to stroke my eyelashes as she sings me

to sleep again.

I’ve lost my best friend.

Her hands were the same as mine

but cold. She never got to grow old.

Her hair was as golden as ever

and people remember her as something

I never will. She was no ordinary mother.

They say she looked peaceful

but I disagree;

if she’d known this was coming, she would have fought,

put into practice all the things that she taught me.

Fight back. Withstand. Have pride.

Do not keep everything inside.
Ironic.

I look at my shaking hands and remember.

Like shovels. Northern, meant for cold weather.

I’ve never endured a storm like this.

A TV drama with an evil twist at the end.

She would have loved that and recorded it.

That horrid little bastard, travelling upwards.

I wish I could just dissolve it.

Dismantle the thing and absolve the pain that it left behind.

Questions squirm their way out of answers,

flashes of in-car, sun-glittered glances.

Like flashbacks but not as glamourous. I see her face,

In every empty space.

There is so much I’d like to tell her.

Like how we loved her and how much I miss her.

And how despite the distance being there, I still kept hold.

She always said she was getting old.

But she wasn’t; she won't.

But don't doubt:
She was still the most beautiful girl in the room.

The most beautiful bride in the car.

The most wonderful mother there was.

The most dazzling glint in a star.