The Kindest Light

Mum, it seems I haven't painted you in the best light lately.
Things I've said, things I've written.
Making our shadows poetic, and public.
But listen, it's because I've found a voice.

It's telling all these tales, it's sketching out our days.
It's our story, Mum. It's us.
How can a person live without a sense of their own narrative?
They can't. It's something human, something deep.
To tell a story and to tell it true.

Religions talk about Truth and now I've got this little piece of it:
It means reality, it means saying what really happened.
No covering up, no sugaring, no softening.
That's a revelation to people like us. Truth feels radical, sharp, like betrayal.
But I've found a refuge in the glint of honesty.

When I write Mum, I tremble.
I have to turn the heating up or wear fingerless gloves. Is it fear or elation?
I think you know how much unkindness has always frightened me.
Much scarier than looking weak or foolish.
But this isn't about blame, pity or sob stories. That's not the voice.

It isn't even about you anymore.
For so long the world did revolve around you-
Your crumpled-up face and those silver tins of super strength lager.
But it's different now Mum.
It's about the colours and shapes of the years
we spent watching your self-destruction flicker and burn.
It's about what happens next.

I hope you know that it's not bitter.
I understand, your 'morbid obsession with alcohol' as you put it.
I see that disease.
Pausing to study it,
I want to mete out words like justice.
But I'm only just starting out.
Still wobbly and shaky, a giddy foal gasping at the world.

Less than a mile down the story's track
tentative but determined,
I'm piecing together shells, patterns emerge
maybe something new and bold will appear?

Right now, we're still back in those dingy days, those rough, hard years.
And they have their own pace, their own ways.
They have a graphic ugliness
I'm sorry. You understand, don't you?

I'd love to sit down with you and show you what I've written
allow you to correct my errors, sharpen my prose
to have your blessing.

But separated by a whole universe and all its time,
I'm still moving and breathing
and I can't just leave it alone
can't leave it stale and forgotten.
I have to keep on
shuffling down the passageway. The story's shadows dancing all around me
like ancient codes painted on rock-face walls

Right now, my view is lit by sadness
still struggling to accept, still making sense of it
this makes the palette darker, and your face comes out looking
wrong.

But I'm moving on for something up ahead.
A vantage point, a place to survey the plot.
A new perspective, a fuller, truer picture.

Slowly, word by word,
I'm drawing closer to the flame at the end,
and when I can finally see, Mum
I promise then, I'll paint you beautiful and light.