Content warning: grief, death.

The Word

My mother’s mother died
the night before I left
the country
to heal.
I took the picture of her
holding my book and grinning
from the wall,
returned the blu-tack.

I never did talk to her about it;
about the word in the title.
I was one of her many grandchildren
one who never called.

Remember her saying,
‘Use your head to save your legs,’
and how she comes to mind
whenever I enact that idea,
but if she had any advice
about hearts
it fell on closed ears
and inactive phones.

Remember saying
to myself
countless times
to just call, or write
–visit even–
knowing she’d be full of
love and stories.

Instead
I watch her
funeral
after the fact
because of time zones and concert tickets.
Her daughters speak of
her love of flowers
and God
like the two are the same
and maybe they are.

Was it that I didn’t know
how to be queer
in front of her,
when I didn’t know how to be
anything else?
Or was it that
I was afraid she’d love me
in ways
my ten-year-old self couldn’t picture
having been chastised for coming home late?

There’s no one
to chide my tardiness now;
that generation gone.
Only the book,
the word;
her smile.

About the author

Michael Earp is a non-binary writer and bookseller living in Naarm, the editor of Everything Under the Moon: Fairy tales in a queerer light, Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories, Out-Side: Queer Words and Art from Regional Victoria and co-edited Avast! Pirate Stories From Transgender Authors with Alison Evans. They have a teaching degree and a Masters in children’s literature and have worked between bookselling and publishing for over twenty-three years as a children’s literature specialist. They are the new owner of The Little Bookroom and have previously been awarded the Australian Booksellers Association Bookseller of the year. Their writing has also appeared in Archer, The Age, PopMatters, The Victorian Writer, Aurealis as well as the anthologies Borderlands: Riding the Slipstream and Underdog: #LoveOzYA Short Stories.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.