a lover, she knew

dear you,

she calls me once more to tell me that she’s speaking to him again. it’s almost as if she languishes in his coldness, the distant way he looks at her. i tell her, as i always do, to put him behind her. to enjoy some time alone, to smell the flowers. and she laughs, as she always does. in a few months we will head down this same road, with her apologies and my telling her to do what is best for her.

perhaps there is a part of her that does not hope for the best, instead yearning to stay in a situation that she knows. a circumstance which i have seen her experience time and time again, from the first at age four – “he doesn’t really love you, mummy. he’s pretending.” but being dismissed on the account of youth.

i watch her grow and i learn things about her i never thought to be true. i wonder of her life before, what it could have been had certain things not happened. without her, i am nothing. but without me – i do wonder where life would have taken her. before embracing motherhood, what did she dream of?

thinking of her loneliness makes my heart ache in a way i’ve never felt before. our relationship is something so deeply embedded into my skin that i feel everything she feels. when i was young i would cry when she cried. when something happened with a lover, she knew i already had predicted it. being apart from her now i still feel the same, as if the cord from birth was never fully cut.

despite the advice i give her, over and over, i know i will get that phonecall. she will laugh, and there is nothing i can do.

yours, kate

(artwork: moonbeams by jessie wilcox-smith)