Mother

They say that the camera captures your soul. I lay down with her pictures strewn around me. Trying to resurrect her back from where she'd never come back. The pictures were sepia tinted black and white. Their edges were jagged and moth eaten. The pages dusty yellow and old. I smoothened out the edges, worn with wear.

There she was barely 16. She looked so happy, so carefree. Another of her at her wedding. Her eyes rimmed with dark kohl and her hands tattooed a deep crimson red with henna. She was quite possibly, the prettiest woman I have ever come across. In the last one, days before her death, her eyes were half closed. Almost resigned. Her face was gaunt, tired, hollow. But still there was a sliver of a smile.

I tried to piece her back together. The way her hair fell in thick black locks across her shoulder cascading into gentle curls. When she smiled her eyes crinkled together. She was young. She was my mother.

At times, I start to forget. I keep forgetting how her voice sounds. I forget the song she sung to me at night to make me sleep. As a child I used to have nightmares. Everything would go pitch black and I used to get up sobbing. She'd whisper softly into my ears humming slowly and cradling me, rocking me back and forth in her arms till I gently drifted back into sleep. She smelt like fresh laundry and of cinnamon sticks. I cling to this memory. I remember her only hazily and her face is blurred at the edges. The tighter I hold on to it the faster it slips away like water in a clenched hand.

They tell me she was beautiful. They tell me she was kind. They tell me what they thought of her. But I keep forgetting her. I have nightmares now. I have nightmares that one day I no longer remember how she looks. There is no soothing voice to comfort me now. Tears roll down my cheeks. There is no one to wipe them away. So I cry and I cry and I cry.

Happy Mothers Day Mum.