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In the Mirror, For My Mother

In the Mirror, For My Mother

– Poetry by LN Woodward –

In the Mirror

In the bathwater
I see rose petals
falling on a little girl
in pigtails & sundress
reaching for your manicured hand
In the mirror
I see raindrops
falling on a teenage girl
in dreadlocks & ripped jeans

glancing up to see you
stroke your nails w/metallic gold paint
I stopped dreaming of you long ago
but last night I painted my nails mauve &
in my lone dream
you walked into the kitchen
in your high heels & black & silver
shining through your auburn hair &
you sat down beside me & I

showed you my nails knowing
you’d love the colour &
I told you I could paint yours later
if you wanted &
you smiled & said yes
I asked you like I should have
20 years ago & I smiled at you
like I would have if that girl
had understood & I held your
hand with love instead of need &

I bandaged that past
in a single
breath.

For My Mother on Her 60th Birthday

You were 
lilacs in
rose 
water/holy 
water/scalding 
deluge/stain
on bible/owth 
of Cain/scar
on moon/moon
light 
on lithium & 
diamond 
flecked
rose
coral
rose
gory 
rose
waxen fingers/waning
nails
3 sharp 
nails
smote my 
hair.
You were
mezzo lullaby/shock &
toil/tears & 
froth.
You were
mine/my
Mother –

I see You in
mirror & 
echo
I hear You in
shadow & 
portrait/my
Mother
my Scrivener/my
Harbor/my
Arbor/You yet
chime in
tempest &
gale.

About the Author – LN Woodward
LN Woodward

LN Woodward (she/her) is a differently-abled writer who spends her days sleeping and her nights writing and reading with a chorus of kitties caterwauling the background. She’s basically a cat herself. An anti-capitalist, anarchist, armchair psychologist cat. Through her writing she explores trauma in its multitudinous forms, the complexity of human relationships, secular mysticism, and collective healing.

She has been published numerous times in Carleton University’s In/Words magazine and had her chapbook Huckster Piss (2008) published through their press. She currently lives on stolen land in small town Ontario, Canada.

 

Did you like these poems by LN Woodward? Then you might also like:

The Psychiatric Patient Profiled in My Application
Zenstronomy
The Memory Box
This is What Death Does
Things I’ve Learned on the Road
Dog Men (A Prison Story)
We grew up on fear and became heroes
Mud Season, Graceless & Violet Abandon
The damsel in distress was not for me
In the Blink of an Eye, Risk Taking, Afterfall
In Time I’ll Thank Shamon
The Space I Take
The Worst Drunk Poem I’ve Ever Written

To check out all the poetry available on Dreamers, like these poems by LN Woodward, visit our poetry section.

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