by Veronique Bequin
(for M.)
The snow melts away overnight. Late winter
grit grips commonplace debris cast aside on the street
where I see snowdrops huddled in a quiet corner close
to a door too worried by the unexpected warmth
to open their tight wee hearts.
I wonder if you will make it until spring light
if you will keep on opening and closing your eyes
to switch the world
your world on and off a little more.
I wonder if the slate is clean if you said your goodbyes
one by one
private and brave
when you’re allowed. Or not at all
now and again
your face turned to a blank wall to hide bedbound
months of winter-pale skin
the shade of a cold eyeless moon
to hang on to your hushed heart
your quietened soul opening closing
your silenced mouth
opening again as you breathe. Your existence
no longer yours hijacked as you go west
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after a southward life.
Your friends your lovers even a sister or two
replaced by ghosts from your long jettisoned past
invaded by strangers
who have reclaimed you as their own
to swallow up your ending life.
Your flickering eyes opening closing opening
again as you breathe one more day one more hour
one more
breath. Your independent life
ingested by cannibal self-appointed doorkeepers
usurpers
who can’t steal your death
but rob the unscheduled shuttering of your days.
Even now twenty first century spinsters have no right
to a last room of their own
let alone a sovereign death.
You are claimed
in the end
by substitutes who cannot leave you
be even now
at the pitiless premature ending of your independent life.
I saw a few snowdrops huddled in a quiet corner
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when I wondered if you’d make it to spring light
when I wondered
if the slate was clean
if you’d said all your goodbyes.
Veronique Bequin’s is the recipient of the Alice Munro Short Story Prize, and her writing has been shortlisted for the Hippocrates Poetry Prize, the Bridport Prize, and the Wasafari Short Fiction Prize. Her publication credits include IO Literary Journal, CV2, and Sinister Wisdom. She has lived in France, Scotland, and England and now lives in Canada.