Joanne Clarkson

From the kitchen where I am

washing a week’s worth

of dishes, I watch my mother

watch television. Become herself

through someone else’s

script. She squints, lips parting.

 

Once at a séance, I saw a Medium

take on another being. She changed

her features to become a woman’s

dead sister. With messages. As if

those who have passed know us better

than we know ourselves. Where

we put the misplaced thing.

 

I watch my mother take back

the animation that so often leaves

her face now. She resurrects in artificial

light. Calls me by my name,

not her mother’s or her sister’s.

For about ten minutes we have

a conversation about real Christmases.

 

All human faces look basically

the same, until they don’t. Slope

of cheek bone, arch of lip

utterly individual. Today for an

instant, my mother transformed

into someone thirty years younger.

 

I stood behind her at the mirror

combing her thinning hair. Her brows

arcing into mine. The blue-hazel

of her eyes becoming the recognition

of two women sharing a life.