‘You’re all I have left’

Poetry

A poem by Robert Dhiraj from his latest poetry collection, All Is Embraced

window with flowers

Mum leaving her last house for a care home, February 2004

We weren’t getting on well, you were so stressed.
The Meniere’s had gripped you,
you were giving yo your home for the last time,
I watched the vertigo attacks
as you contorted on your bed,
your floral nightdress could not hide the despair.
I didn’t understand why you rejected my offers to help,
to talk to your GP about the myriad pills he prescribed,
or even simple tasks
like wrapping vases and crockery in paper.
I railed against the shyster you employed to do it
at 40 pounds an hour.
‘Get out’, I said ‘get out!’
Afterwards you upbraided me for embarrassing you.

The mahogany Victorian sideboard, your pride and joy,
too big to go anywhere, it had to go.
I tried selling it outright, advertised it, approached auction houses.
I tired to give it away, to relatives, to charity.
‘Sorry, no room’.
Junk yard collection fees were extortionate.

Finally I rolled it downstairs, head over heels,
a slow somersault into the front garden.
It stood there for a week,
next to a stunted rose, a mini Angkor Wat.
The I axed it into weird-shaped chunks,
a Taliban ruin, Blackpool style.

You spent a lot of time with your wardrobe, anther pride and joy.
One suitcase for the tip, one suitcase for the Oxfam shop,
one suitcase of ‘keepers’,
your best clothes, ‘fit for a queen’.

I take the one you give me for the Oxfam shop.
That evening, you ask plaintively,
‘Which suitcase did I give you for Oxfam?’
‘The blue one’. As I speak, I know what’s coming.
Your pallor turns, grey, you brace.
‘That was the keeper’s suitcase.’

Next morning at the Oxfam shop at opening time,
I’m straining at the leash.
‘Yesterday I brought a blue suitcase.’
‘Oh yes I remember’, the lady says with faint alarm,
her face flushed, I ask, staccato,
lumps in my throat, ‘Can I have it back?’
‘Oh I’m sorry, liv’, her voice sing-song,
‘…all them clothes went like hot cakes’,
her dialect extending the last syllable, ‘…aaakes’.

It’s dark, well before dawn, the dofa bed is folded,
I’m setting off back to Australia.
My mother and I stand in the dim light, like stiff cartoons,
‘I’ll be back next year’, I say.
You grab me roughly by the biceps, your voice uncanny,
‘You’re all I have left’.
I’m speechless.
We’re not mythical giants in a Babylonian tragedy,
we’re mother and son
in the freezing Lancashire night,
trying to open our hearts.

From the poetry collection, All Is Embraced – featured image credit to Steve Sharp via unsplash.com

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Robert Dhiraj

Robert Dhiraj is a published poet and writer. Originally from northern England, he now lives and works in Byron Bay, NSW, Australia.

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