after Wallace Stevens 1. “They’re the angels’ sofa cushions,” her daughter says. “When they bounce on them, their mummies shout.” 2. She listens to what the lady in the chair beside hers is saying as the stylist makes her hair bigger, bigger, bigger. 3. The clouds move as quickly as her mother’s memories, drifting out of reach before she can speak them. 4. The male doctor tells her to write down her feelings, but her brain is so wispy she can only write the word ‘angry’ and not explain the way fury forms, shape-changes, dissipates, forms. 5. She has an old friend she can never pin down. “Oh, I’d love to see you,” she says airily, “but I’m going travelling.” 6. Drinking more water is the answer to most things. 7. “How wonderful to see everything without making judgements,” her husband says. 8. In her twenties, she had lots of one-night stands, but now she tries to picture their faces, they’re vague and nebulous. Does she have a type? 9. On the day her mother dies, she realises the clouds and sun and sky are one but separate. 10. “If you’re feeling down, just look up,” her mother always said. She sees a shaft of light breaking through washy cloud. Then something falls. Her mother’s last laugh / parting gift? — SAM SZANTO
Sam Szanto lives in Durham, United Kingdom. Her pamphlet ‘This Was Your Mother’ was one of the winners of the 2023 Dreich Slims Contest and will be published in 2024. She also writes short stories and her debut collection was published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. Sam is an editor at The Afterpast Review.