LEAVING THE ROOM

Back from the beach, they’ve fallen asleep
with the light on, cuttlebones and driftwood
on the windowsill. A blond twist of hair,
an outflung arm as smooth as shell insides
and still dimpled hand
name me Mother and bind me to this name.
Beside one convoluted ear
an hourglass pile of sand has formed.
                         How many times will this head
turn on the pillow, this small sweep of lash
surf the cheek’s eroding contour?
I must refuse such questions. The word
goodnight is a familiar smell
that fills the room like orange peel.
On the floor is strewn a spill of counters.
Just one last game, they begged, and I said No.
I see their faces bright with disobedience
and kneel and sweep up colours with my forearms
as my mother knelt and wept once, scrubbing
at a stain my sister left on brand-new carpet
while I watched wordless through an intervening
door of glass. I drop the counters in a jar,
turn out the light. The hall’s a long retreat
and every day the dark is newly made.
                                   Each time I return
I am farther back, more ebb
than flow, out beyond the rocks,
the lighthouse and its light, trickling into crevices
crazy with barnacles, chitons razor-tongued,
the bloodblisters of mussel shells,
soft anemones and weed.

© Louise Oxley