It's Still Life

The Other One

She spent her final years in an asylum,
running up and down the hallway
with her tits bouncing off her knees . . .

      according to Dad who really never had
      a kind word to say about his mother.

But some things stick in your head when
you’re young, like songs about babies
falling from broken boughs, or sacred

words should you die in your sleep, or
Grandma saying that spirits live in cracks.

Her fist came down so heavy on the table
that a crack opened straight and hollow
down the centre of the wood.

Her kind of anger lit a room hot and heavy, and
as a kid, I thought that powerful lingering ache
she left over us was what crazy felt like.

Not like the sideways crack in the garden wall
that’s covered with ivy. That crack is the power
of the old tree roots feasting on soil moisture.

But that woman was a drought sucked dry.

I remember her owl eyes could lick the night
with a look that would grip your neck.

Crazy.

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Sunday Whirl 563:  crack sideways covers feast ache power hollow spirits sacred owl lit heavy  ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting on Twitter