Things you need to know about stardust
(for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee)

    Open the door and you will find a kingdom

    there. There are things that you need to
    know about me. I have a conversation
    inside my head about how some people
    should not be parents but they are. But
    they are. They fight in front of their children.
    They watch the news or inappropriate
    films. I look at my mother’s bent head
    over her work. I am doing this for her
    but she does not notice. Does not say
    anything. I look at her bird nose and her
    beak mouth and I have this urge to connect
    with her but she does not want to connect
    with me. I feel tribal towards her. She’s
    an orphan in the world now. I dreamt about
my grandfather last night or was it last
    week. I think of the pale fire of the sea

    that resonates within me like thunder. Of
    course, I have always wanted music in
    my life. People are writing about modern
    loss now. Living in loops. I look at my
    mother’s bare neck. Her shoulder blades,
    and I think to myself that I came from
    that. I came from her intense psychologies.
    There’s the upward push of her fingers
    as she works. I would have put music on
    or the radio but she said that she works
    better in silence. She works barefoot like a
    girl, and I think of her pressing into my
    father’s back at night when they sleep together in the
same bed, and I think of how some people
    should never have been parents and then

I think of mine. I think of the silence in their bedroom and

    the last things they say to each other before
    putting out the light and putting their heads
    on the pillow. I wonder did my father
    always make my mother feel safe. I don’t
    know what that’s like. Believing in a man.
    Believing that he can give you the world.
    I think of the truth about loneliness. About
    how it’s all stardust, moonlight and roses.
    I think of the men who have been kind to
    my mother in her life because she was a
    beautiful woman and didn’t have to work
    hard for attention from kind or unkind men.
    The way that I have had to work hard for
    it my entire life, and I wonder if my mother
has ever kissed my father’s neck like I kissed
    the last man that I was ever in love with.

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Abigail George has two books in the Ovi Bookshelves,
"All about my mother" & "Brother Wolf and Sister Wren"
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