Mátay Melinda Mária
In Memory of My Mother
You were the longest relationship of my life.
Am I lucky —
perhaps not?
Sun-bleached graveyards I wander,
roaming around my ancestors’ tombs,
between the flickering sacrifice of candle flames —
in the eternal cycle.
On the weeping leaves, it hurts:
the order of nature —
rotting.
That’s where we all end up.
In the wholeness-moment of life,
our longing to perish nails
its cross to our demise.
At the altar of those we loved,
we complete our fate:
we loved,
we fought,
we always did something — and we did it hard.
We practiced The Mistake.
My heart embraces farewell,
in the scorching, flesh-consuming flame
that incremates—
and yet
forges
an eternal bond
for the soul,
encoding transformation into our cells,
sealing our brief earthly existence’s
farewell sigh
in timeless star-clouds.
You were my longest relationship.
You gave birth in me
to both life and death.
Am I lucky —
perhaps not?
Words desert me—
and the stifled sobbing breaks through over and over again.