Mother died when I had milk stains on my teeth.
Since then, I have pulled faces from the walls, the carpets,
the curtains of my house to keep me company.
I have scrawled the way they look, for I cannot draw,
in faded notebook pages – smeared handwriting and ink.
It’s the only place I can call home.
Now, I have a family of twenty-odd creatures and faces:
men, women, hybrid women-men, sexless, genderless,
morphed beings who read as having “the outline
of an adoring blue Mastiff, a bleeding face appalled, a wrinkled
woman on the bathroom wall, a man some days hunting, an oxen
and an animal, women-beings with distorted features and figures” but
never someone I know.
I guess I shan’t find my mother anymore.
So alone, I draw and draw and draw
from the walls, the carpets and the curtains of my decrepit house
gray, tinted blue in the winters, never warm in summers
tracing my fingers over every surface, every corner
and that’s when I hear the house’s first sigh.
“We should get that leak looked at...”
tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap
“the sound shall drive me mad” –
words uttered by father
when he heard the house first cry.
tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap
Pressure builds slowly, it comes creeping in with a silent force
and my family started bleeding tears, the ink smeared in my notebook pages
from the youngest member (a tea-coloured man who scared me at first,
truthfully, he still does)
to the eldest (a gray greyhound with a shepherd’s nose);
they all sang of my woes
by disappearing thinly, the house enclosed them,
(it gave them to me and now it took them back, like a jealous God)
erasing any trace of their original forms,
ruining the second-hand copies I had drawn
by leaking and crying from all of the walls, the carpets
soaked, the curtains all gone, the house was a bare skeleton,
it called for me and we had to move all the furniture out ourselves.
“We should get that leak looked at...”
taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap
“the sound shall drive me mad”.
taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap
We lived on the second storey, with a single bedroom for all
a bathroom with water which tasted like salt
and sounds of
my mother keeping us out
of trouble.
I did not want to drown.
I think I heard her wail tonight, but it must be the house.
“I say, we should get taptaptap that leak taptaptap looked at…
taptaptap the sound taptaptap shall drive taptaptap me taptaptap
mad.”
Then at night I heard gushing sounds, of water rushing through the house,
while, I alone, prayed for my mother and her soul (I no longer wished to be alone);
I heard the floors creak, the walls moaned, the curtains closed
as the figure of my mother washed itself whole
on the window.
I think I saw her smile.
“Wetaptaptapshouldtaptaptapgettaptaptapthattaptaptapleaktaptaptaplookedtaptaptapat…
taptaptapthetaptaptapsoundtaptaptapshalltaptaptapdrivetaptaptapmetaptaptap
mad.”
My mother was home.
The house kept me company until she was gone, the faces I pulled
from the carpets, the curtains, the walls, were all that I needed
to have enough strength to run.
“We...”
GUSH
All the taps were running and
the house wept;
the house was weeping
as all the taps burst
forth with streaming tears,
unstoppable
flooding both storeys,
wailing at my story.
The rushing water was
unstoppable
and I
with my dry eyes
sat placid in the house, soaked to the bone
with the tears of my home,
the only place which kept me company
when I was alone.
I never saw my mother anymore.