It's Still Life

The Book of 27, The 20th Glyph: Cindertide
Anger that forgot what it was fighting

The Syrup

“Auntie, may I have the syrup, please?” — my nephew, hair the colour of reef-sand, still damp with strawberry shampoo, the first to call me auntie, the first to make me feel it fit; “Yes, of course, love,” I say, and set the bottle into his hand.

His mother’s voice cuts sharp: “I’m his mother — not you — and I’ll decide if my son can have more syrup or not.”

I rise from the table and slip into the ladies’ toilet, where my sobs come thick and shuddering — not for her words, but for the hollowness my body remembers: the echo in my hips, the phantom weight in my arms.

The syrup isn’t syrup — it is everything I cannot hold; her anger isn’t anger — it is the armour she wears against my grief too vast to name.

I didn’t weep for the children I miscarried — I wept for the mother I couldn’t be, in a world that kept offering syrup I was never allowed to pour.

And as I sat in that stall, ash in my throat and salt on my hands, Felreil piloted his shadow across the tiles, his wings echoing: “The fury was never hers alone.”

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “Pilot”.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.