The Door

by Emily Berry 

The summer my mother decided to die

she was not in her right mind, they said,

to show decisions didn’t come into it,

not the usual kind. Word I could not say,

you abide inside my mind, with your three

sliding syllables, your sibilance, a snake

too scared to strike. When I speak the phrase,

it falls away. Own life, they always say,

still marvelling that such a thing was there

for taking, in such a way. How a person

becomes other to themselves, we cannot

bear to own. The door to my mother’s death

is jammed ajar. The strip of light it throws

panels the floor. Sometimes I see her in there,

tracing a finger across some ancient text

as the gargoyles of her mind watch over her,

the enormous shadows of the things

she left behind. Mother, where did you go?

Portrait in the attic, bones under the earth;

voice of my life, far off, calling me home.