The Possessed

When I was eight I saw the ghost of my mother.

She was alive, but she was a ghost

standing at the front gate of our house

watching me as I skipped a few doors down.

It was lunchtime.

I guessed she wanted me to come inside

though she never spoke

just watched

with her expression calm and her lips straight

and her rounded belly

in a black zip-up jumper.

I skipped towards her. She turned

to go inside. In the hallway her black jumper

slung on the banister.

I called out,

finding her eventually in the back yard

lugging timber with my father

and wiping her brow.

I asked why she’d come out.

She gave me a look.

Go and play, will you?

So I went back outside in a slight daze

which stuck around

for a good twenty-five years

though I think now I get that this is what

a mother becomes sooner or later –

an entity inhabiting my language

my shade of lipstick

and the way I have suddenly started

to eat foods well past their best-before

and when I see my daughter fingering out notes

on our piano and I make yet another to-do list

I realise

my mother has possessed us both

despite sitting here quite corporeally

trying to read poetry.