What Mothers Say

What Mothers Say

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Nichole • 4 Comments

This is what we show our daughters with their curious nipples cupped in training bras…

Sunken eyes and shrivelling stomachs, dead butterflies. Night time manoeuvres where at the tip of slicing words, we make love – to music. Clutching at Hollywood and refashioning like small girls in tall shoes, mimesis:  ours becomes a forest of despair, a snapshot where everything in our world is dying, for love, forlorn. Kissing before we shudder, snap and break into contorted pieces. A place where he turns his back and we caress it and our pleasure never sees the sun – secrets.

Sharing so much of him we are famished and fearful, fretting over her, the one before, and the one we know will come after. Embracing all the ugly because his desire means we are beautiful, and we endure red eyes from the smoke he puffs, clouding our dreams; and we stand in shadows watching him smile with the crowd, no hint of our names in the corners of his mouth; and we exchange pain for prolific creativity and pay the double rate, measly pride in beautiful sculptures we mould from our ashes, burnt finger tips, trying to touch him.

And when we can stand to do all but nothing we tell them, our daughters, this is love – feel it.

My sisters, tell me something different. Teach me to verse love like I know it, because I have been sad for so long it is a forgotten language. How do I annunciate the settling of my soul when I saw him pray? What is the beautiful way to say I am happy, and that my voice bounces from the weight of my joy? Which metaphor explains how God taught me to wait, to sense how patience matured our love like oak trees. How can I express that love is nothing like dying; it stretches my limbs languorously and without even thinking I find myself reaching – I see myself living and I know what has come, I have been brought home to face hope.

So I will look into her eyes and tell her, if it sucks you down, cut it loose, someone has bewitched you.

|Love is nothing like dying|

To Yaweh, the author of love, the very will to hope.

© Leona Satchell-Samuels 2009

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  • http://l-vii.blogspot.com/ L-VII

    Hmmn, you know, sometimes I forget that you are woman now….I just remembered.

    • nytwriter

      Thank you for being first, I know it is harder, but we needed the light for our small steps. x

  • emerald

    ‘Teach me to verse love like I know it, because I have been sad for so long it is a forgotten language.’

    sister, when i learn it, i will write it and i hope you hear it and remember that you knew it always. x

  • Lauren

    Wow.
    This is amazing, and so beautiful. The very nature of love remains a partial mystery to me sis, I wish I could tell you something different. I have learnt that it is difficult to truly love something that makes you unhappy – fear and love cannot co-exist, so much of what we are taught about love is a lie. Competition, insecurity, possessiveness, jealously, endless heartache. Love understands none of these. I have also learnt that emotional suffering is often caused by desire. As you say, love is nothing like dying; maybe it is desire that kills.
    Stay amazing, and find joy in your gift. No one can give you what you crave, for it is already inside you. Smile.
    x