The daughter wonders if she can swear by the mother.
Her hands bleed as she unknots the cactus that is her grief,
regret is a noose around her neck.
Mother, your daughter encounters the outfit you wore on your wedding day;
shigan yarbawa, a shimmery purple lace and gele with silver accents.
Today, it is weak and netted, and the colour has faded.
This telling of the daughter’s grief, it will be inaccurate,
the wound is too deep to prod.
Mother, did you feel it when your daughter plugged your nostrils with cotton,
and shrouded your body in white?
Stay strong, a hundred voices murmured, their eyes distinct friezes of pity,
until they blurred into your face.
The home you lived in for a single moon cycle,
will be forever remembered as your dying place.
It has become sacred and the walls remind your daughter
of your body’s pallor in rigor mortis.
She blames herself; her prayers for healing were riddled with disbelief.
Those days when you asked the translation of verses you’d seen in your sleep,
before her fingertips bore witness to your absent pulse.
Mother, you daughter lives now in the liminal spaces between the unsaid,
She deems herself unworthy of watching you draw your last breath.
Her heart will not remain the same;
it will grow more wretched.
It’s a fleshy bag choking on blood and should’ve beens,
a place to hem her pain into its margins.
Mother, is it too late to harvest your prayers?
Your daughter feels your presence still, in your favourite lace dress,
Absent umbilical cord and all.
translation and glossary:
shigan yarbawa – a yoruba style of clothing
gele- a headdress worn to occasions in West Africa
Kataru Yahya is a Ghanaian writer and medical sonographer. She is the author of the novel Home Is a Silhouette. Her poetry can be found in Ta Adesa and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review. You can find her on social media at @kforkataru.