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  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Contributors
    • Support Us
  • Submit
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Volume I >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume II >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume III >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume IV >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume V >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume VI >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II

My Mother's Grief

by Claire Scott
Grief was in my mother’s touch
once removed like a second cousin
grief was how she burned
lima beans and didn’t notice
 
Her stockings had slid around her ankles
in baggy puddles of beige
grief was how she spent days
 
Swaddled in loss, listening to Mahler’s
dark symphonies in a dark room
my mother who was there, and not there
 
She never talked about our older brother
who lived less than ten days
his gossamer ghost wandered
 
Our house on slippered feet
we could hear him in her sudden sobs
we caught glimpses of him
 
When she sloshed scotch
when she threatened to swallow
her pills, to drive into a lake, to jump
 
And was taken away, red lights flashing
on our white cotton nightgowns
my brother, barely there, always there
light as a lullaby, dark as a ledge

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam, and Healing Muse, among others. Claire is the author of "Waiting to be Called" and "Until I Couldn’t."