Torrent
Do you remember, Mum, what I said to you after your mother’s funeral? I said “You’re free now. It’s going to be OK. You’re free.” It was such a long time ago. I remember stroking your hair, stiff with styling spray. I remember the tilt of your head, a damp hopefulness in your eyes. And a vague discomfort at offering comfort to you. Inauthentic is how I felt. Partly because, by then, I had begun the process of unpicking myself from you, stitch by tight stitch. Partly because the words felt threadbare. I knew that your freedom could not be so casually gifted. In adulthood, your mind remained caged by a childhood that required you to become nothing more than your outline in order to continue living. You were chastised, screeched at, berated, neglected, controlled, coerced, blamed, mocked, and punished with scalding silence. Not permitted to disappoint, denied the means to succeed. I try to imagine what it was like to be a young and frightened you, in that bare house with the blank eye of a porthole window halfway [...]