I didn’t cry when she died.

I made lists.
Calls.
Arranged chairs in rows like a war formation.
The dead need order,
and I am good at that.

My mother died in silence.
Not the poetic kind,
just the kind that hums from a broken fridge
no one bothers to fix.
She used to climb the stairs
like a guilty prayer;
to feed my children the light
her own life had stopped seeking.
Then descend
into the muted belly of her own flat,
where love wasn’t offered,
only endured.
My father kissed her corpse.
On the forehead.
Like she’d earned it.
That kiss was a confession
he never dared while she breathed
and it made something inside me clench,
but not break.
I’ve been breaking quietly
since before I knew it.
They used to fight like teeth and tongue.

She cried often.

Not in sobs,
but the leak of a rusted pipe.
She became
what silence makes of a woman:
efficient.
Invisible.
A shadow that folds laundry
and dies standing.
Now she is gone,
and I am her echo
with knees that don’t knock,
with a spine too stiff for grief.

I didn’t cry.

I filed death like paperwork.
I nodded at mourners.
I passed tissues I didn’t use.
My mourning is mechanical:
a locked jaw,
a list of errands,
a memory
scrubbed clean for ceremony.
But at night,
when no one is watching,
I avoid mirrors.
I know what I’ll see.
Her face.
My face.
Both of us
trying not to scream.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by sq lim on Unsplash