my language was my mother

my language was my mother

so this is how she dies then
bit by bit, limbs giving way, neck

taut, throat choked on a bone or
something, something in the belly

pulling back, lunging forward both
at once until she’s done, her eyes,

fingernails, skin, tongue, turning to
purple, taking to death as a precondition

to extinction; I’d always thought a
light snuffs out from somewhere

inside her and she’s gone, a blotch of
blackness but it’s more than all

that; there’s parts taken away
one-by-one-by-one from her, from

me too when she goes, consonants
clanging at first, then blurring into the

aaas – eees – iiis – ooos – uuus and the
rest of it until she and I touch our own

liminal space of nothingness just like
that: there one day then gone – poof –

a draught, the south-westerly prising
open the nothings on her worktable, the

book sat upon its back, pencil-marked
in places where she stowed away her

thoughts for later on or thought she
did, its flyleaf flapping, the pages ripped

from the spine before they were read