Captured

• Emily Webb-Smith, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2007

Under our midnight sky you lay on the bitumen to face your death,
leaving me with the price of belonging to you.

The daylight brings hours measured in drug induced sobs, distancing the news so shocking it dances its way through a tiny town.
Friends mirroring disbelief form circles of warmth capturing the pain that waits patiently outside in the tree curling wind.

Cold coffee cups and hushed whispers shuffle in to replace an empty house with painted smiles.
I drift to couches drawn into gossip about a mother who crept away from her life.

I invent voices for a mother who washed her dreams away with the sheets,
who ironed passion away with the uniforms and folded love away with the tea towels.

Silence slips between the sheets and numbs the child in me allowing a young woman to weave straws of indulgence into the tapestry of motherhood.