Mother squared

Louisa Cusumano

she/her

@louisa.cusumano

DIRTYDISHES MUDDYWATER

I tried to write about something else.
It is useless.
All my thoughts feelings muscles and bones compel me to write,
Only of you.

And yet. I cannot.

I physically cannot find the memories of you in my mind. They’ve been flushed away. Disintegrated.
Along with any memory of my time in kilt at all.
Stolen from Mnemosyne’s pool.

Scooped, swiped and swallowed
by little demons
Who seek to erase the immediate joy and leave me only with

distant glimpses of my young Happiness and hovering Recollections of my
Present pains.

Delphi, faith. My Oracle companion. Her name, extracted from Chaucer. Sent when I was six.
She told me that trauma

Steels them from you,
Did you know? She lost someone too so she can talk,
Someone close. Closer even, than you.

Did you know? When you left you would take so much of me with you?

If you did, why in god’s name, leave me behind?

I suppose I’ll never know. Till we meet again.
I pray it is soon.
I pray it is far.

I don’t pray at all.
Look at what a mess you’ve made. I’ll clean it for you,
yet.

For now, I shall return to my place,
These suburbs, but no longer my easy home.

With unburdened people, with unburdened eyes,

Eyes that have never looked upon deflated flesh.

Eyes I cannot see through. Not ever again.
Now mine are glazed with cloudy water.
Look at what a mess you’ve made.
I’ll clean it for you,
soon.

ROSARY SONNETS

“And when I was about to die, I prayed” (people in stories)

I. Death, she came

It is a strange conundrum, Death.
That poses questions of the soul
One refutes to wrestle with, until

She stares us in the face

And engraves in us, deep, deep, down, this uncertainty

That taints all that we do.
It was not until the Rosary,
Did She come knocking at my door,
In the hallway

She left me a parcel.

And on it was my name.
And in it was everything,
I ever questioned of my mother’s faith.
Why were all the answers so neatly there? I asked Because, she said, clear, crisp Her sound,
In death, we are no longer bound.

II. Death, she left

“Bound”, I said, by human thoughts?

By science, by politics, by her or him, By who was fat, or right, or thin,
By where you lived or who you knew, In death, these ailments are all renewed.

That’s why, it is, it’s 59,
Because reason doesn’t need roundness, Or rhyme.

Or structure, Or poise,

Or things

You or I can understand, In death, you see, as I now see,

We are, in this life and whatever lies beyond

The fruits of our labour and love that carry on.

CASUALTY, SIMILE

Inspired by the memory of Colum McCartney,
pledged to the memory of S.M.

I. Patroness,
Born, of a different womb
I tumbled into this world
And you, my holly light
Dragged wet fingertips
Over my forehead.
Sheltering me in your existential coven. You held my head below the water.

II. Submerged,
In the darkness, I couldn’t breathe.
For fear. Of the waves that buried me.
The taste of salt resting in my crevasses. Eyes, teeth, tongue, toes, armpits.
And you, my instructor, heaved my body From Poseidon’s grip. Unafraid.
I was unafraid. Not like before.
Where once I saw the waves,
Something that overpowered me. No more. They shine and glisten and glow.
Now I welcome their refreshing coming, too and fro, too and fro, too and fro,
You see them too. Your favourite place,
I know.

III. The Sand,
Holds imprints of our feet; yours large, mine smaller. I turn because the image of mine next to yours, Grows dim. To find you lying on your back
A Thousand feet away. They’ve been faded for so Long, why did I only see it now? I travel back to You, across our sacred land.
Your limbs are frail, they barely mark the sand.
Here nor there, here nor there, here
You, asleep in the wet sand.
I kneel, and gently bathe you, mother,
I hold your head below the water.
Preparing you for our existential coven.

You’re at the gates.
I can’t go with you there. Who will bathe me now?