It's Still Life

I.
I really should love this season, gilt and ruby leaves that move with the wind, catch and hang in spider webs. But I don’t. People in my family always die in the winter. Every last damned one.

II.
We are like grass. Some always die, but most lift their veil in spring and renew. Recharge. Ever ready. Spring’s seasonal clock.

III.
I’ve always kept time with a 24-hour clock, and considered a full day from sunset to sunset. My mother considered a full day from sunrise to sunset, and ignored the night. Normal people sleep through it, she’d say.

IV.
No one wondered whether I was normal. Whether I was seeing something in the basement, some ancestral glitch in the corner of my eye. What people don’t know won’t hurt you. Dad told me that when I was too young to understand about those who watch over us.

V.
I sometimes feel my dad walk across the room in the darkness. Never my mum though, never heard her footsteps, never thought I saw her standing by the front door with her suitcases. If I had, she’d have asked me to carry them. Makes the shiver to think of Mum’s eternal glare.

Poem form: a modified cadralor, written in prose rather than stanzas. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Imagery and poems ©Misky 2023.