La freccia e il cerchio
anno 8, numero 8, 2021
pp. 349-351

10.
Richard Harrison
The final cut

My Mother Grew Heavy

Between the day in June my mother booked her death
                    and the day in July when the doctor came,
            my mother grew heavy in the hospital
                                on twelve last suppers.

We all know hospital food, but
    my mother, having lived on meagre portions
        to keep herself cancer-free,
    tasted tilapia and roast pork and butter and pudding
                        and ice cream,

and the irony of it was, it was the inoperable cancer
        that let her find again
                a child’s innocence with food.

She grew stronger every day; every day
        she could stay awake longer, go out more,
    and push her walker up the gentle slope
            of the hospital’s garden path
                    she likened to a mountainside the day she arrived.

In that garden she fed the sparrows,
    and set down the final version of her life,
        story by story,
            until she was satisfied its meaning was clear.

And the people who came to my mother’s floor
to visit loved ones who walked the corridors
            like they had each been given a filing cabinet
                        to move without help,
or lay unconscious with ventilators
doing lungs’ work
                across their empty mouths,

those people would come to my mother’s room
to be comforted that at least someone was getting better,

and the dimming wick of their hope
                            touched light again.

And so it went
            in those rooms
                    where expectations were fulfilled backwards;

my mother grew round and heavy
            the closer she got
                                                       to the death
                                        she’d called on, and that came,
                pleasing and complete to her,
                            as the final bite of a perfect meal.