Here, there are: no sounds in the sky to send her
scrambling to turn off the lights, with just a small
candle for me, until the neighbours yell to blow it out,
no packing bags each day with the nappies
and medicines, ready to grab and submerge at the call,
no lining up for bread each morning
or cottonseed oil when the grapevine
heralds its return.

No, we didn’t move that far away.

Her 85-year-old mind creaks at memories of chatting
with our old Vietnamese neighbours and the kind
Russian piano teacher on the other side.
It stands at the counter of the Lebanese grocer
where she would get coffee beans ground with cardamom,
the scent anointing the chatter and bargaining in the shop.
Punchbowl was her home away from home
for nearly five decades.

But now, an hour away and nine years later, she still
hasn’t let her mind move in, luggage straps
tied around it in the corner.

No curfew, we open the garage from upstairs, drive to Coles
without passing roadblocks, park the car underground
with just our empty shopping bags in hand,
speaking as loud as we like.

She’s surprised when the lady in front of some chilli plants
smiles and tells her how they’re best kept in from the cold,
and when the one at the checkout laughs at our nattering
and places her bags in the trolley, wishing her a lovely day,
Mum beams, “God bless you.”

“Those ladies were very nice,” when we’re back in the car
and then she’s quiet.

We come home to find we left the lights on again.

**

Hemat Malak is a poet from Sydney, Australia. She writes on diverse themes including motherhood, separation, nature and identity. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Catchment Literary Journal, Quadrant Magazine, WestWords Living Stories, Writerly Magazine and elsewhere.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents