Edition 38 | 2021
A Momento Mori Artwork Sonia Zanatta Words Tabitha Lean
Sometimes I imagine my mother is sitting at the end of my bed. Her back is slightly curved and her sparrow frame cradles itself around her crimson, red heart. Her delicate hands rest upon her pale knees, petite legs crossed, naked feet slightly tapping to a silent melody. Her eyes are blue. Not an azure blue, more a sunny sky blue. The kind of blue that fluffy clouds rest against. A kind of faded out blue, like a cornflower coloured dress left on the line in the summer sun. Flecks of light ricochet off her blonde locks. A golden crown framing her gentle face Her lips would crease into a mini smilejust an ever so little curve of her mouth, but just enough to reach her eyes. One hand would absently smooth out unseen creases in my beddingas if her hand so soft and gentle could iron out the rough and tumble of midnight slumber. I think I’d be little… yes - about three or four.
I’d be made up of all soft edges yet to be hardened by men or the burdens of lifeall doe eyed and playfuldreaming of fairies and wizards and pixiesyet to know the burden of loss and grief and failure and painfree of capitalist shackles and patriarchal demands and colonial confines and all the vagaries of life. I imagine that just before I am to submit to rest she’d softly sing in a quiet voice, as she pulled the covers up to my chin. I’d be safe and warm and loved. I’d close my eyes unafraid of the monsters that creep in the dark, unaware that nightmares exist in the waking hours, or that dreams can go entirely unrealised. This would be a time way before hope is dashed, or cynicism grew along all my bones like mould spores spreading into lungs. It would be a time where my heart held love and knew no ragea time where my spirit soared and I could be me-
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