Touch

On a mobile by Kerrianne Flett, exhibited in the Heritage Centre, Papa Westray, Orkney, Sept. 2021.

by Stephanie Green

A waterfall of tiny porcelain hands,
chubby, baby-like, swirls in the draught.
How hard it is to prise open
the fist of a baby grasping a finger.
I must have clasped my mother’s like this.
Since lockdown I have not touched
another’s skin except when rubbing butter
into a chicken’s cold, shiny thigh.

Palm to palm, my mother and I
stand either side of the window pane.
She does not understand why
I can’t come inside. Her face
is translucent as porcelain held to the light;
a tear glistens, as rain spatters
the glass. I want to wipe away her tears,
as she did mine, memories resonant
like struck porcelain, one flick

and ping, I’m there, a child again,
but she lives in the forever present.
Mirrored in each tear-drop
is a convex world, the garden of the hospice
she does not recognise. It is raining
inside her head, words washed away.
Mother, I can no longer touch your thoughts,
and they will not let me hold your hand.