And behold, I will liken my grandmother's screams unto a mourning dove:
my matriarch, crying out for her daughters.
I hide in the bedroom across from hers,
too unsure, unwilling, unable to witness her pain.
Over and over she screams, "I'm hurting!"
which has no other response than, "Yes."
No drugs to give, no reassurances that it will get better:
the woman is one year short of a century.
Less than that, even.
As we wait for her to die, we are somber, immortal stones,
we are birds clustering a wire,
we are the citrus trees drinking in fire
that wasn't lit for us.
As she waits to die, every day is a desert
mountain with no water at the top. Instead,
her salt-deficient mind sends her images
of bugs on her ceiling, gnats on her toilet paper,
towering shadow men in her room.
Sometimes, when she's lucid, she begs for the hospital.
But in a global pandemic, we know we'd never see her again
and it's not like there's anything more they could do.
I watch my mother
as she watches her mother die.
I think of how my mother has always said
she plans to live to 100.
I think of how her mother almost did it.
I think of mothers.
I think of mothers watching mothers die,
before eventually dying themselves.
I think of mothers dying by becoming mothers.
I think of mothers swearing off death, banishing it out of pain,
until the day it sneaks in with winter chill.
I think of dying people calling out for dead mothers.
I think of the mother as the saint: holy in death, revered, called upon in times of pain.
I think of my Heavenly Mother and wonder if She ever died or watched Her mother die.
I do not think of watching my mother die.
I do not think of watching my mother die.
I do not think of watching my mother die.
I do not think my mother will die.
How could she?
What does it mean when the being who brought about your beginning has to end?
I think of how the number of phone calls
I make to my mother are finite. Countable.
I think of how you never really grow out of needing a mother
but they're taken from you anyway.
I think of how maybe you do eventually grow out of needing her.
I think of how much sadder that makes me.
I think of how, if I never have children,
I will never cause someone to watch their mother die,
to listen to the thing that brought them life
beg for death.
I think of my unbroken line of dead mothers dating back to primordial soup.
I think of womb after womb,
leapfrog with Russian nesting dolls in a mass grave.
I think of how this is a requiem I have only heard the first few measures of,
a shroud I have only just begun to weave.
I am so far from any satisfying end.
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,734 Reviews
still reading and thinking about this poem <3
I have read this poem a thousand times, and I keep coming back to read it once more. <3
I don't think I'd call this a review. It would be more of a "things I just couldn't relate to and am so depressed by it because this poem is just pure feeling and I lack it. I lack the beauty and mind to relate to this"
I am truly amazed at how deep a poem could touch. I usually just dismiss the fact that my mother goes through pain. This poem really hit hard but the fact that this may have no impact on me makes me feel horrible. I think I can somewhat relate because I realized from this that I watch my mother die inside everyday.
Every time I scream at her for silly things and every time I fail to understand that her failing to understand my emotions is actually because she is constantly trying so hard to relate and make me feel better. Every time I have a fight with my elder sister, it's her who hurts when we refuse to talk to each other.
And Fortis, what touched me the most was this one line.
It's just so beautifully put and so in place. It makes me want to cry inside. I know this isn't very helpful as a review to improve your poem or anything, but I feel that this poem needs no improvement. It's just perfection - the likes I've never seen.
I hope you feel better.
Yours sincerely,
Myth
Holy heck. This... this is amazing. Truly amazing. I feel this in my soul, like this is something that can be spoken aloud, imprinted into my heart and pushed into my lungs, forcing me to breathe your words. And my gosh, this is beautiful. This is beyond words.
This is extremely powerful Fortis. I resonated with all of this a lot, just in my own anxieties about aging and death, and those closest to me experiencing them, and then this elusive idea of "motherhood-daughterhood" - identities made in bearing forth life, but culminate in death.
I don't even know if I can review this because I mostly just want to compliment how much I loved it, but I'll give it a try - if you want feedback on something I didn't address feel free to leave a comment and I can try to respond!
I love how you open up on a very concrete image - we've got the metaphors there to give it some weight, but you've stated very directly what this whole poem is about in the first line so the reader isn't confused and the message is padded by vagueness.
In stanza 2 - I feel like there's a lot of birthing-vibes, with the no-drugs, crying from her daughter, you get back into the birthing theme at the end, but I wonder if you could make a more concrete reference to it here since the comparison is so striking at the end.
Stanza 3 was breathtakingly beautiful and haunting, I had to pause and read it like three times because wow.
^ I don't think you need the word "somber" there, clearly the speaker is somber. I love the idea of birds on a wire -> like they're huddling over something fragile and dangerous that is a take on death that is unique, but yes, I think that feeling is definitely present too. Also the image of "citrus trees" (ie. trees that bear fruit -> total mother motif) drinking fir unlit for them, is such a unique image I can't get it out of my head.
I think that there is a holy reverence and even sweetness that comes with walking with someone who is dying, it's completely mixed up in grief, injustice, anger, sadness, and grittiness - but I did find some of that sweetness missing a bit. That might just be my experience though; and valid if that's not something the speaker is feeling in the poem - but this image of citrus trees drinking up something that is deadly I think could be a moment to lean into that feeling a bit if you choose to in future revisions.
I like the starkness of this couplet:
- it serves as a really perfect transition into the "listing" aspect of the poem, and I know the formatting is going all over the place in that section, but I think it totally works the poem feels like it really builds and grows and as a reader I feel like I can hear the speaker growing in their emotion and realization of what they're feeling.
This part I love with my whole heart:
The strange idea of holiness in dying and in the maternal I think is controversial and uncomfortable for some, but shouldn't be. There's a whole feminist lens that could go into interpreting this whole poem; but I guess I'll just say I think these lines in particular are just hugely powerful, poignant, and important.
I like that you lean back into the reflection on the speaker at the end of the poem - because although there is a very strong sense of "I" voice, the first half feels at times like the reader is looking through a window of the speaker's eyes at the grandma / mother, then in the second half it shifts to be even more intimate where the reader is looking at speaker themselves.
^ The idea of "Russian nesting dolls in a mass grave" is wow I don't even have words for how viscerally powerful that is. The poem deals really complexly with the ideas of death and motherhood - in one line motherhood is compared to sainthood and then in the next it's a line to a mass grave, there is reverence mixed with pain, love mixed with trying to distance one's-self. I think it's good that these complexities are there - because that's how most people experience death and grief I think, not just in one color but as really complex. (You also don't sound contradictory in midst of saying competing things which is hard to do!)
I feel like maybe "primordial soup" feels almost too flippant? where it's almost cliche, but that may have been the vibe you're going through there.
Love the metaphor of the shroud at the end, but I think it'd be powerful if you could somehow work in that image of weaving somehow to the beginning too since the other images of wombs, birth, birds, and growth sort of feel most linked together to me?
The last line was good in that it held double meaning of not feeling like the speaker was at a "satisfying end" to their grandmother's life, or from their own, but I also wanted in those last three lines for us to return a bit more concretely to the grandmother so that the poem kind of comes full circle.
Overall, this is a very impressive poem - the themes are dealt with in such powerful and complicated ways that really just hit me. Your imagery, metaphors, phrasing, and word choice were all balanced and seemed to work.
Also just on a personal note, I kind of assume that some of the content of this poem is something you're going through or have-gone through, and I'm really sorry if that's the case. I'm hoping that poetry is helping you process things a bit, but I know that sucks to watch a grandparent dying, and must be hugely challenging with Covid going on. If you need/want to chat please feel free to PM me. <3
Thanks for sharing such a powerful piece. Your poetry never fails to impress and inspire me with what poetry can do.
- alliyah
Wow. I'm so sorry for you. This is such a beautiful poem, and it's so sad, and you do a great job of capturing how and why it hurts when we lose a mother. I especially love the line "what does it mean when the being who brought about your beginning has to end".