Another 16th November

Today we share the moon, Mum.

So, sorrow and I took a short stroll.

Pulled along as a puckered thread, she tugged me to the quieter, more innocuous spaces of my deepest revery.

Ivory as the speckled china holding my cup of liquid comfort; as ivory as your soft woollen jumper that hangs heavily over my shoulders - I’m enmeshed and warming; and that's the closest I can get to a hug from you.

The air is always bitter by November, and today is your birthday.

There’s no rolling tears to wipe the slate clean,

just the rolling thunder of a quiet, patient grief.

My stoicism now seems to stand someplace between steel and air;

and I guess, sometimes, I just can’t allow myself to “go there”.

So all I do, is I lean into the menial small details of this silent day.

I make space to remember you, as I bat my usual distractions away.

I gaze at the ivory bristles, the feathered plants that sit atop my empty table,

and I try align myself as closely as I can to you in that photograph...

To where you stood, full moon in the pinch of your fingertips,

surrounded by the feathered barley, wearing our woolen ivory.

And it’s here I desperately attempt to wedge myself into your moment;

to make it match with my own, somehow.

But still - no rolling tears, just the patience of love; passing like charging horses,

curling and hanging like a white curtain of clouds, folding over a forlorn sky.

Why look to grey, when I could tug at any hint of warmth?

Off-white is one step closer to the barley-corn that surrounded you that mid-summers night.

To the full moon we could call ours tonight, so beautifully bright.

I may be braced for winter, but I know, one day, it’ll be alright.